Imagine the happiest moment you’ve ever had together with your family - your immediate family, extended family, close friends, whatever family means to you. You feel close to those around you. You feel loved. You feel belonging. You feel a special kind of peace. As you remember this, do you feel a longing? I’ve been feeling that longing all week and I want to explore why it’s such a spiritually natural thing to feel.
My uncle Larry Hunt recently passed away. Yesterday, I watched his wife say goodbye to her beloved husband for the last time in morality. It was heartbreaking. I can’t fathom her pain.
Loss is excruciating and I think it’s because being apart feels so foreign to our spirits. Before this life, we all lived together with the Father, and we will return to that state of eternal togetherness. Separation is a mortal thing. As I ponder the pain of separation, I feel so unsettled, like my spirit is rejecting the whole sensation. We come to this world with a natural longing to return to eternal togetherness. The plan of salvation teaches us how to achieve that goal.
Yesterday, we all said farewell to the man who has been the patriarch of our family since the passing of my grandparents. He organized gatherings that centered around singing together - something that brings my family so much joy. I remember the gathering we had after my grandmother Billie’s funeral. The cousins squished together on the couch and Larry passed around a microphone and made sure everyone felt included. If I think carefully, I can remember gatherings before she died and what Granny’s aged voice sounded like as she sang. It still brings tears to my eyes. She so loved being with her family.
Once Granny and her home were gone, we didn’t have a built-in place to gather anymore. It was never the same. We’ve had some reunions and those are precious to me, but in mortality, we can’t help going our separate ways (across the state, country, even world) as we build our own lives with our own families. We can’t be together all the time. Then people pass away and we really don’t have the option for togetherness. It’s tragic. So, we feel the longing. The longing I feel now for all those tender moments.
But the thing is, I didn’t have my own family then. If I went back to those youthful times, I would miss my husband and my children unbearably. I don’t want to be in the past when we’ve created so much together now. I long for not only what I loved then, but for the moment when all that joy will be added together - an eternity with the family that came before me, the family I have now, and also the family that is still to come. I long for all of it. And that is the fullness of joy that we are promised as we make covenants in the temple that bind us together. We are promised eternal togetherness.
I heard a man named Matt Townsend say on a podcast, “On both sides of the veil, we are still a family.” The veil is a thin separation between us and those we long for. I firmly believe that the closer we draw to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the closer we will feel to those we have lost. We haven’t really lost them. They are still working to help us in ways that they couldn’t as mortals. We can still help each other and feel connected. Our spirits long to be connected.
My cousin talked yesterday about how Larry saw God in everything. She told a story of him witnessing athletes and becoming emotional because those people had good health and were able to do what they loved. He felt joy for them. I witnessed his awe for God’s creations when we traveled together and stopped to see a waterfall. He was emotional as he contemplated life. My mother and her brothers all have the gift of great joy and peace because of their faith in the gospel. It’s amazing and I want to be more like them.
My mother and her brothers grew up in a family with so much love. At the end of the day, they would gather together to play music. They liked each other that much. They had peace. I look at my children and wonder how we can carry on that tradition and feeling. How can we raise them to carry that joy and peace throughout their lives as these great examples have?
The next life will be unimaginably amazing because of the compounding love and belonging we will feel. We will be whole with each other. We are learning to be peacemakers in this life so we can have eternal peace in the next one. I’m excited to pursue peace and joy now, with my family, so our joy can be added to the joy of everyone at that time of eternal togetherness.
What a blessing it is to have the Lord’s gospel in our lives so we can have an eternal perspective. As I’ve reflected on the funeral yesterday and all I’ve learned from Larry, I realize that so many troubles and irritations of this life are small. So many things don’t matter. Family matters. Peace matters. Strengthening our relationships now and in the eternities matters. In the end, the story of our world and our universe is the story of family. The story of eternal togetherness.
Loss is excruciating and I think it’s because being apart feels so foreign to our spirits. Before this life, we all lived together with the Father, and we will return to that state of eternal togetherness. Separation is a mortal thing. As I ponder the pain of separation, I feel so unsettled, like my spirit is rejecting the whole sensation. We come to this world with a natural longing to return to eternal togetherness. The plan of salvation teaches us how to achieve that goal.
Yesterday, we all said farewell to the man who has been the patriarch of our family since the passing of my grandparents. He organized gatherings that centered around singing together - something that brings my family so much joy. I remember the gathering we had after my grandmother Billie’s funeral. The cousins squished together on the couch and Larry passed around a microphone and made sure everyone felt included. If I think carefully, I can remember gatherings before she died and what Granny’s aged voice sounded like as she sang. It still brings tears to my eyes. She so loved being with her family.
Once Granny and her home were gone, we didn’t have a built-in place to gather anymore. It was never the same. We’ve had some reunions and those are precious to me, but in mortality, we can’t help going our separate ways (across the state, country, even world) as we build our own lives with our own families. We can’t be together all the time. Then people pass away and we really don’t have the option for togetherness. It’s tragic. So, we feel the longing. The longing I feel now for all those tender moments.
But the thing is, I didn’t have my own family then. If I went back to those youthful times, I would miss my husband and my children unbearably. I don’t want to be in the past when we’ve created so much together now. I long for not only what I loved then, but for the moment when all that joy will be added together - an eternity with the family that came before me, the family I have now, and also the family that is still to come. I long for all of it. And that is the fullness of joy that we are promised as we make covenants in the temple that bind us together. We are promised eternal togetherness.
I heard a man named Matt Townsend say on a podcast, “On both sides of the veil, we are still a family.” The veil is a thin separation between us and those we long for. I firmly believe that the closer we draw to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the closer we will feel to those we have lost. We haven’t really lost them. They are still working to help us in ways that they couldn’t as mortals. We can still help each other and feel connected. Our spirits long to be connected.
Larry outside the temple after my wedding. He was one of our witnesses.
My cousin talked yesterday about how Larry saw God in everything. She told a story of him witnessing athletes and becoming emotional because those people had good health and were able to do what they loved. He felt joy for them. I witnessed his awe for God’s creations when we traveled together and stopped to see a waterfall. He was emotional as he contemplated life. My mother and her brothers all have the gift of great joy and peace because of their faith in the gospel. It’s amazing and I want to be more like them.
My mother and her brothers grew up in a family with so much love. At the end of the day, they would gather together to play music. They liked each other that much. They had peace. I look at my children and wonder how we can carry on that tradition and feeling. How can we raise them to carry that joy and peace throughout their lives as these great examples have?
The next life will be unimaginably amazing because of the compounding love and belonging we will feel. We will be whole with each other. We are learning to be peacemakers in this life so we can have eternal peace in the next one. I’m excited to pursue peace and joy now, with my family, so our joy can be added to the joy of everyone at that time of eternal togetherness.
What a blessing it is to have the Lord’s gospel in our lives so we can have an eternal perspective. As I’ve reflected on the funeral yesterday and all I’ve learned from Larry, I realize that so many troubles and irritations of this life are small. So many things don’t matter. Family matters. Peace matters. Strengthening our relationships now and in the eternities matters. In the end, the story of our world and our universe is the story of family. The story of eternal togetherness.
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