*Today at church we had Fast and Testimony Meeting. We had arrived home from our vacation late the night before, and we were tired, but as I listened to the testimonies of my ward members, I thought of our vacation, and I realized that we had experienced a miracle. I couldn't quite get all my thoughts together to share at the meeting, but I wanted to here. I'm calling it The Miracle of the Perfect Timing. (Please bear with me--this will probably be long.) We had gone to the beach on Padre Island at Corpus Christi for the Fourth of July weekend. It was Friday the 3rd, so it wasn't as crowded as Saturday, but there were still plenty of people there. This was my children's first experience with an ocean, and they loved it. The older four especially enjoyed boogie boarding in the waves. At one point, my 12-year old daughter went out to boogie board, and the current started pulling her further from us, so my husband and 14-year old son joined her. They got farther away, and my 8-year old daughter wanted to join them, so she walked along the beach until she could be with them. Then they just drifted further and further until I could barely see them. All of a sudden, I got really anxious about them. I really wanted them to come back, but I couldn't leave my other three children, and they had drifted so far that they couldn't see or hear us. I knew that the only way to get them to come back was to pray for them to come, so I asked Heavenly Father to bring them back to me. About ten minutes later, I was relieved (but not surprised!) to see them walking up to us at our spot on the beach. The kids ran to the water and my husband stayed back with me to talk about the boogie boarding. I told him that I had prayed him back, and we kind of chuckled about it. I asked how our 12-year old did, and he said he didn't know--he had sent her back to me when our 8-year old got to him, because she was tired. I said that she had never arrived. We looked around, and sure enough, she was nowhere around us. I immediately headed up the beach with my 6-year old to look for her. We walked quite a way, but saw no sign of her. I kept thinking about what she must be thinking, wondering if she was scared, or hurt, or would think to walk back the right way, or if she was still in the ocean, drifting, or caught in a rip tide, or, or, or... I stopped, ready to turn back to at least get my cell phone so I could keep in touch with my husband, but there he was, just a bit behind me (with our 3-year old), walking fast, ready to press on. I said I'd go back to the others, but when we looked up the beach--there she was, a tiny spot through the crowds, walking along the shore toward us. We hurried up to her, and she said that she had headed back to us originally, but started boogie boarding again, and just got pulled further and further away without her realizing how far she really was. We were all so relieved to be reunited! So, as I reflected on this during church, I already knew that my prayer had been answered, but all the other pieces of the event--the timing of my feeling anxious and praying for their return, the timing of my husband listing to the prompting to head back, the timing of realizing our daughter was gone, the timing of walking up the beach and pressing on until we saw her, the timing of her realizing she had gone too far and turning back to find us...I could see that it was all perfect, and it was a miracle. My 10-year old daughter did go up and bear her testimony, and she said that the Holy Ghost had been with us on our vacation--and she was so right.
*Today during Sunday School, we talked about the suffering of Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. My feelings were already tender, and this lesson was so beautiful. At one point, we discussed the "bitter cup," and if we had ever had experiences where we were scared, and would rather not go through something, but did anyway, knowing the end result would be worth it. It reminded me of another personal experience, and again, I didn't share it there, but want to here. I thought of childbirth, and how it may be a bit of a bitter cup, but my perspective of this changed with the birth of my last baby. With this sixth little one, I was in labor very, very early in the morning, and all of us in the room were pretty tired. My labor hadn't lasted terribly long, but as I was pushing, and knew that his birth would be very soon, I felt a wave of fear--and it wasn't my own. I felt like I could feel the fear of my son, as he was being pressed out of the safe home he'd known, feeling pain and uncertainty. I wasn't surprised when right then the nurse said that his heart rate was increasing. It was a quick flash of insight, and very soon after, when he was born and they handed him to me, I knew that I could comfort the fear away from him, and he did stop crying. I don't know why I got that insight to his feelings right before he was born, but it was so unique and tender. I hadn't really thought of it often since then, but I did today, thinking about how my son had to pass through this challenge of being born, and he was afraid, and I couldn't physically comfort him until he had finished, but it had to be done and it was incredibly worth it for both of us.
It was awesome.
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