Today's Tender Mercies

So many things to be grateful for. Started out reading an article this morning that I just chanced across. it was just what I needed. Funny how after that everything just kind of added to the lessons learned from what I had read.

Took Aedan to a birthday party today after attending a funeral. I walked Aedan and a couple of his friends down to the park where the party was taking place. A bunch of moms were sitting there chatting while their kids played. I wasn't going to stay, but I quickly recognized this as a tender mercy. I needed to be there. I needed to talk to these women and enjoy their company. It ended up being just what I needed, and I was glad I stayed.

As I left the party, I started pushing the buttons on the stereo. Zan had stored a new FM sports talk radio station on the stereo a few weeks ago, and Quinlan, as a joke, a few days after he stored it, covered it up with a country station, knowing that would tick Zan off. Well, as I started to pass over that station, I felt strongly urged to stop. I'm not a country music fan--raised with too much of Willie, Waylon and the boys I guess--but after listening for just a moment, I knew why I had to stop there. Another tender mercy. This is what I heard:

So many messages from this song sang out to me. The idea that the birth of a child is like seeing God. I feel that I've seen God many times in my life in that respect--when my children were born, when my mother died, when my kids have gotten baptized, when I watch Gannon pass the sacrament. It's times like these that I know God loves me. That He's aware of me. I also love the message that God sends us personal messages everywhere. Do we stop to look? Do we accept these things for what they really are?

Tonight, Zan and I took an older, mentally challenged woman from our ward to the temple with us. I've visit taught her for the last few months. I feel that she, too, is a tender mercy in my life. Margie loves unconditionally. She has a child-like way of looking at life. I can learn a lot from her. She frequently says, "She loves me, doesn't she?" or "They love me, don't they?" Why is it I always look at life from the half-empty point of view when it comes to this? I've decided I'm going to start thinking this in my head when I talk to people. Heck, I may even ask them, "You really love me, don't you?" Wouldn't that make them remember me?