Category: Our Family

It was a Saturday morning, I was upstairs playing ‘school’ with some of my sisters. I, of course, was the teacher. Then, I don’t remember which sister it was, came running upstairs saying ‘Timothy’s BLUE!’ I remember answering “No he’s not. He’s not blue, he’s the same color as the rest of us!” When my sister insisted the Timothy was indeed blue, I went downstairs to see for myself.

I found my mom, sitting on the floor, next to the speaker phone, with Timothy in her arms. He really was blue. And my mom was talking with the 911 people saying our address very deliberately, with a frantic voice. She tried doing CPR as they walked her through it. Then the paramedic arrived, to my 11 year old self I wondered why they had sent a fire truck. (The house wasn’t on fire, my brother was blue). My mom got a neighbor to come over and watch us, and mom went with the paramedic. (I think my dad met my mom at the hospital).

While mom and Timothy were gone, there were some police officers in the house. They had roped off my parents room, for investigation since, being 10 weeks old, Timothy slept in his cradle in my parent’s room.

I remember being scared that day, I didn’t know what was going on. I remember going out into the backyard away from the house, to be alone. I remember kneeling down to pray, to plead with Heavenly Father that Timothy would be ok and that he would be able to come back home to be with us. I don’t know why I decided to go pray, honestly. You see, we weren’t members of the church back then. In fact we weren’t members of any church, and I don’t ever recall my parents teaching us kids to pray. But at that moment, I just wanted to beg Heavenly Father to help Timothy.

I don’t remember anything else from that day. Obviously mom & dad had to come home and tell us that Timothy had died. Nothing the doctors did would bring him back. Timothy would have been 15 years old now. It’s hard to think that my baby brother would now be a Teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood, had he lived. In my mind he is still an infant.

Almost 4 years after his death, my family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And two years after that (6 years following Timothy’s death), my family went to the Los Angeles Temple, and there we were sealed as a family, and Timothy was sealed to us. Looking back I can see that Timothy’s life had a purpose and in those short 10 weeks he fulfilled his purpose. He came to help our family get into a bigger home, and he died, to soften the hearts of my family so that we would be ready to receive the gospel when it came our way. I love my family and I love this church. Having the gospel in my life gives my life direction, and without it, I have no idea where I would be today. But I most likely wouldn’t be married to Kyle and living in Utah with our 5 kids, had I not accepted the gospel and been baptized. 😉

Thursday morning I got a call from my relief society president asking me if I would like to go to the conference center in Salt Lake city, for the general Relief Society meeting. I said that I would love to go, but that it would depend on whether I can find someone to watch my five kids. So I tried getting a couple of young women from our ward, but they were busy. And anyone else that I could think of that I would ask to watch my kids, should be going to the meeting too. So I asked Kyle if he would just ASK his manager if they could work something out that Kyle could be home Saturday afternoon so I could go. Well I got really lucky, because Kyle’s manager told him he could just take Saturday off. So Kyle was home to watch our kids, and I got to go to the meeting with some other women in our ward.

It was just wonderful to sit in the conference center, undistracted by kids or anything else. And it was just beautiful to sing with and hear all the women that filled the conference center, singing “There is Sunshine in My Soul Today” (Hymn 227).

I’ll just share a couple of things that seemed to be directed at me and caught my attention during the meeting:

• Eliminate the non-essential things in our lives

So often we get caught up in all the things we have to do, that we either don’t have time, or forget to do the things that are most important. And personally I know that there is too much clutter in my house, and it seems to suck up a lot of my time and my energy and my happiness. It’s just got to go!

• Visiting teaching needs to me more of a way of life than just a task.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking ‘well I already visited my sisters this month, so I’ve DONE my visiting teaching’ when really we should be looking out for our sisters, and being their friend all the time. And I just wish my visiting teachers would just VISIT me, let alone anything else. Sad huh?

After the meeting, everyone in the conference center stood to watch the first presidency leave the room. A whole bunch of sisters were waving at the prophet, and he waved back. So more ladies waved, and he waved back. So President Monsen waved at the choir, and they waved back. And so he waved to different sections of the conference center, and in turn each section waved back. It was so cute, and just a wonderful experience to be there tonight.