A Tender Mercy

This week has been a bit intense for me and my family. For those of you who remember when I moved from Layton, and how hard that move was...yeah, I am classifying this move as harder :) I was wallowing in that hardness a little yesterday (okay, okay....a LOT) when a paper fell out of one of the boxes I was unpacking. It was a little 3x5 card with a familiar typewritter-cursive font. It was from my grandmother. I remember getting it from her years before, but I have no idea how it found it's way into this box, as I don't remember seeing it for years.

Now first, I have to tell you about my grandma. My grandma is one of the most influential people in my life, next to my own mother. She rose above her circumstances to become a true self-made woman. Her childhood was marred by parents who abused and neglected her and offered little to no support as she grew up. She babysat neighbor kids to pay for her own school clothes, and walked from her east Salt Lake home to West High every day so she could attend their secretarial classes, where she graduated a year early. She was an amazing woman. An amazing woman who took a special interest in little old me.

Grandma would write me letters, nearly every week. They were simple in nature...usually dealing with how the weather was, how my grandpa's rose tree was doing, how many hummingbirds were outside her patio window, and so on. She always seemed so interested in what I was doing, who my associations were, my joys, my fears, my successes, my sorrows. My mother always encouraged me to write her (I was less than good at this) and I am so glad she forced the issue with me, as after my grandma died, many (if not all) of the letters I had written to her over the years were found in a box she kept in a special place.

So anyways, back to the card. There is no mistaking the font she always used (I could almost hear the clamour of her old typewritter as I read it), or the little bird stickers, or the well placed punctuation...it was definately one of Grandma's :)

This is what it read,

"The Lord has not promised us freedom from adversity or affliction. Instead, He has given us the avenue of communication, known as prayer, whereby we might humble ourselves and seek His help and divine guidance so that we could establish a house of prayer.

They who reach down into the depths of life where, in the stillness, the voice of God has been heard, have the stabilizing power which carries them poised and serene through the hurricane of difficulties." -President Spencer W. Kimball -

So as this paper fell to the ground and I read it, it was as if she were wrapping her arms around me like she always did to tell me she loved me and that it would be okay, but at the same time, giving me some much needed loving counsel. No question, a tender mercy from my Heavenly Father.