To be a pioneer

Happy Pioneer Day. 

We are still alive.

I appreciate everyone who continues to check in on us and encourage us and pray for us. It is humbling to be remembered daily by so many of you. 

Thank you. 

The last month has been busy. While we moved away from Arizona at the end of June, we don't actually move into our home for another few weeks and have spent the intervening time living the vagabond life.

Both my parents and Jacob's parents are in Orem and have so kindly opened up their homes and pantries to feed us and help us and keep a roof over our heads. We've attended a few family reunions in Logan, UT and in Park City, UT, and made a lovely trip to Idaho to see friends and extended family members, which I hope to write about soon. It is such a blessing to be surrounded and supported by our families. 

The kids have been in cousintopia with cousins from both sides of the family available to play almost every day since we arrived. I've started getting some things in place to start life here and have been grateful to have time and help with the kids to do that. 

There is much to be done legally, financially, with utilities, medical expenses, and paperwork when someone dies and additionally when you move. It's been like having a part time job for the last many months to keep up with all of it. I finally think I am getting a handle on things when another quandary surfaces and I have a new list of things to resolve. Somedays it feels so overwhelming that I just don't do anything. Dissolving the life you built with someone else, just the paper part alone, is a long and heavy process. I don't recommend it. 

I am still so very tired. We haven't kept a good schedule and its summer and the kids want to play and there isn't time for a nap and its light until after 9:00 pm and I'm worn out at night and we're in mourning all mean that we should sleep more than we do. The heaviness of grief surrounds me like a blanket and continues to cloud decision making and complicate even simple tasks. Getting out of bed most mornings feels like a big accomplishment.

And yet somehow things get done, the kids are fed, we spend time with loved ones, we are helped and served and encouraged and make it through the day. I can't believe we've survived three months without Jake, but here we are still moving forward. Still pressing on. 

I was grateful to think of the pioneers today as we commemorate their entrance into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847.

As President Monson stated, to be a pioneer is to be acquainted with sacrifice. These early saints left everything they had to follow their convictions of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his restored church. 

As long as they had the Savior, they could endure anything. 

Today in church, as I was partaking of the sacrament, I was struck with the thought that I could not live without Him. Without Jesus. As we sang the hymn, Jesus the Very Thought of Thee, these lyrics spoke to my soul:

1. 1. Jesus, the very thought of thee
   With sweetness fills my breast;
   But sweeter far thy face to see
   And in thy presence rest.
2. 2. Nor voice can sing, nor heart can frame,
   Nor can the mem'ry find
   A sweeter sound than thy blest name,
   O Savior of mankind!
3. 3. O hope of ev'ry contrite heart,
   O joy of all the meek,
   To those who fall, how kind thou art!
   How good to those who seek!
4. 4. Jesus, our only joy be thou,
   As thou our prize wilt be;
   Jesus, be thou our glory now,
   And thru eternity.

I always thought that I could not live without Jake. I think everyone who loves their spouse, or child, or parent feels the same way. That you could not go on without them. And while I feel an irreparable hole that Jake inhabited and cannot begin to imagine years and years without him, the reality I felt today is that I could not live without Christ. I could not make it another moment without the redemption, the grace, the mercy, the resurrection and the salvation that He alone offers. 

Maybe that is what the pioneers understood so well. That if they had the Savior, they had everything. Though stripped of homes, of nationality, of possessions, of loved ones, of comfort and security, having nothing left but their faith in Christ and in His perfect Father they had everything they really needed. 

President Hinckley said the faith of the pioneers manifested "an unquestioning conviction, that the God of Heaven in his power will make all things right and bring to pass his eternal purposes in the lives of his children. We need so very, very much a strong burning of that faith in the living God and in his living resurrected Son, for this was the great, moving faith of our gospel forebears."

Blessed, honored pioneers.