Perhaps the most important lesson we can learn is not only how to hear the Lord, but also to recognize that “all things testify of Christ.” This is apparently a mantra of mine, because it wasn’t very long ago when I noticed Sean reading on his Kindle during Sacrament meeting. In an angry whisper, I told him to put it away. I followed the order with, “I don’t think that book is teaching you about your Savior.” With a characteristic snarky face, followed by a gotcha smirk, he said, “But Mom, all things testify of Christ.” He won that round.
Early 2021 was a really hard time for me. In February, Nathan moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. I was left to try to hold our family together while preparing to move them across the country. I felt like I was losing everything that mattered to me. Our home would soon go on the market. But this was a drawn out process, so I had to go through the slow torture of remembering both memories and plans that I would soon lose altogether. And I was doing it without Nathan, who tried to come home monthly, but who was a visitor in our home, having already moved on.
One day, in the early spring, I stopped to go stare at the beehives. I was aware that it was warming up and the bees should be venturing out. The beehives were completely inactive. It wasn’t really a jarring experience to realize that they were all dead. Of course they were. Wasn’t that the theme of the year? During one of Nathan’s short visits, I had him carry the empty hives into my kitchen. After he was gone, I began the sticky, dirty, time-consuming process of harvesting the honey. Most of the bees were piled in the bottom of the hive, but a few of them were stuck to the comb. I didn’t know what had killed them. Perhaps the Rexburg winter? It wasn’t the wasps this time. Wasps would have robbed the hive and carried off the bodies of the bees.
The process of harvesting the honey was both sad and satisfying, It was nice to have a task other than cleaning and packing to take my attention. Every filtration made the honey clearer, cleaning out the imperfections. It was an immensely positive experience to place jars full of translucent, golden honey in front of the window and watch the sun light them up. But after days of the kitchen being a sticky mess, I was anxious to have the beehives out of the house, and so I placed them on the back patio, unsure what would happen to them when we moved.
The next day, I looked out the window to see a thrilling and scary phenomenon. The hives were covered in bees. The entire porch was. Anyone who stepped out of my kitchen onto the back porch would have been surrounded by thousands of them, swirling around and swooping into and out of the open hives. I knew they were robbing them and I loved it. I figured that, perhaps, letting the bees rob those hives would help someone else's hives to survive. I also thought that, perhaps, if there were so many bees on my porch, we might just convince a scout to take up residence in one of my hives. So I donned the suit and put one of the hives together, leaving the other open, for easy access.
The bees continued to rob the hives, a little bit fewer each day. After a week or so, the bees could be counted in dozens, rather than thousands, I just left the hives where they were, killing the wasps that came near, but letting the bees take whatever they could from my poor, dead husks of hives.
Months passed. June came far too quickly and slowly. Our moving date was set for June 21st. We would pack the trucks on my 42nd birthday. I was, in my estimation, far too old to be starting over. It hurt. I had prayed over and over for Heavenly Father to help me, “sing as I walked.” As arrogant as the comparison is, I continually reflected on my pioneer ancestors and the number of times they had to abandon their homes. Yet, the children’s song says that they sang as they walked. I was disappointed that with the relatively small trials I was facing, I seemed unable to do it with a cheerful heart. I felt like I was mourning a life unlived, at least anywhere except my mind. I was mourning the pictures of my daughters in their wedding dresses that I intended to take with them sitting on the branch overhanging the river in our side yard. I had watched a group of retired ladies in my ward who spent their golden years going on outings and trips together. I was mourning the mounting list of friends I had made in Plano who I wanted to make my squad as our children grew and required less of our time. I was even mourning the peaceful, hillside cemetery I passed on the way to church, where I thought I’d quite like to be buried someday. I was mourning my forever home, as we had called it when we moved there and promised the children that our habit of moving every couple years was coming to an end. I was mourning smaller things. The loss of a calling that I loved. The sight of the temple from my backyard. The library. The kitchen shelves. The driveway puddles Nathan hated so much. Weekend trips to visit my family.
At the same time, I was mourning the loss of my young family that came with the long anticipated changes of my oldest graduating from high school, seminary, and receiving a mission call. I attended each of the rites of passage intended to honor him on my own, with my heart completely broken, feeling it was profoundly unfair that Nathan wasn’t with me to hold my hand while I cried. Every parent, if they’re very lucky, will experience the pain of this loss, but no one, I reasoned, should have to do it alone.
On June 7th, fifty friends showed up at my house with tools and tractors, step stools, shovels and skid steers. They knew Nathan had been gone and our lawn mower was broken. They knew that I had not had the time or means to keep up my yard and they knew we were leaving in a couple weeks and would need to sell our house. They came without invitation or notice, to work in my yard. This was not the first and nowhere near the last experience like this, but it was agonizing. I knew I wasn’t saying goodbye to a community, but to a family who loved me as much as I did them. I went to bed with my heart ripped in pieces and woke up to celebrate my sweet Nathan’s birthday surrounded by so much love and feeling completely alone.
It was two weeks before our move.
I expected to spend another day wrapped in the monotony of my tasks, working to keep my mind from perseverating on the things that were bothering me. It’s always been my favorite technique for dealing with the unpleasant. My balm is time. I just have to avoid letting things grab hold of my heart long enough to heal. I started in the kitchen, and somewhere around midmorning, I glanced up to see something new happening on my porch. The hive I had set up was covered, on one side, with a blanket of bees. They weren’t swooping around the porch, like they had when robbing it. They were so close together that the hive was hardly visible beneath them.
I went outside to take a closer look. The bees not only covered the side of the hive, they were also fanned out on the table, close to the entrance. The ones on the table stood upright, with their hindsides in the air, their wings beating quickly from their stationary bodies.
I’m no expert beekeeper. It’s always been Nate who studied them. I simply delighted in gleaning what I could when he would take the hives apart and show me the brood hatching or explain various behaviors. But I knew enough to know that this was a phenomenon called fanning. These bees had chosen a new home and positioned workers at the entrance to fan pheromones into the air, signaling to all their swarm where to come. It was amazing. We’d never caught bees before, only purchased them.
Over the next couple days, I watched as the bees busied themselves in their new home. It wasn’t long before I could discern pollen on their legs, a sure sign that they were setting up to stay. I was busy too, preparing to leave. And at times I was absolutely overwhelmed. Nate would not be home until time to drive away. Sometimes the pressure got to me. Sometimes I handled it poorly. At those moments, I gave myself a time out. I would slip outside to the chair I had positioned right in front of the hive and watch the bees.
Before there was time to blink, it was one week before our move.
The bees were still robbing the open hive. Sometimes there would be hundreds of them on the frames, taking whatever was left. One evening I went out just before dusk. The frames of the open hive were covered with bees, thousands of them.
This struck me as very odd. Bees don’t like to be out at night. As twilight approaches, the activity in a hive will wind down slowly and it occurred to me that these bees should long since have decided to head for home. But they didn’t seem busy at all. Indeed, they seemed peaceful and at rest. The only explanation was that this was another swarm which, inexplicably, had moved into my open hive. Without wasting time, I went to find my bee suit. They weren’t going to like this. I put the hive together, with the bees inside, hoping they would stay. Over the next few days, I watched for pollen carriers and couldn’t believe my luck when they appeared.
Luck. Is there any such thing?
My world became even crazier in the following few days. There was so much to do. But there were still a few moments, stolen from the chaos, when I found solace in sitting on the deck watching those bees. And it was in those moments when the spirit found the chance to speak to my broken heart. This world is full of loss. Nothing gold can stay. We are fallen. The world is fallen and everything we love will become dust, destroyed and dead, like my spring beehives, with only sweet (and perhaps sticky) memories left behind.
“It’s a lie,” the spirit spoke to me. Nothing is ever lost beyond HIS ability to heal. Nothing is ever taken away. If we have patience both with ourselves and with God’s plan everything will be restored beyond our capacity to understand. Even if the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupted tomorrow and Rexburg was utterly and instantly destroyed, it would, in time, be returned to me, perfect and whole through the incomprehensive power and grace of my eternal Savior.
Perhaps it seems the most inconsequential of things. I started with two hives. They were taken from me. Heavenly Father gave them back in the very moment where I felt lost just so I could understand that nothing and no one is ever lost.
I don’t mean to say that I will return to that life, living in my old house and experiencing all of the things I had imagined up in my mind. I mean that we are linked, one in the body of Christ. We are part of the family of God, connected forever and working toward the same goals. We will have these connections in this life and extending into eternity and all of it is part of one gigantic, joyful story. The sealing ordinances were never meant to be limited to linking individual families. They are to seal us together with God’s entire family, an unbreakable connection to everyone we love, and a restoration of all things through the grace and power of Jesus Christ.
There is no end to glory;
There is no end to love;
There is no end to being;
There is no death above.
