Words of Power and Comfort...

Friends of ours from our ward found out a month ago that their baby has trisomy 12 - which is a fatal diagnosis. This is their first child and they set up a website like ours to keep their family and friends updated. Their most recent journal entry included some Latter Day prophets' words and I found them echoing the feelings I have regarding my own experience with Felicity. I KNOW that they are true.

“At the funeral of two-year-old Marian Lyon, the Prophet said: “We have again the warning voice sounded in our midst, which shows the uncertainty of human life; and in my leisure moments I have meditated upon the subject, and asked the question, why it is that infants, innocent children, are taken away from us, especially those that seem to be the most intelligent and interesting. The strongest reasons that present themselves to my mind are these: This world is a very wicked world; and it … grows more wicked and corrupt. … The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth; therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil, and we shall soon have them again. …

“… The only difference between the old and young dying is, one lives longer in heaven and eternal light and glory than the other, and is freed a little sooner from this miserable, wicked world. Notwithstanding all this glory, we for a moment lose sight of it, and mourn the loss, but we do not mourn as those without hope.”5

“A question may be asked—‘Will mothers have their children in eternity?’ Yes! Yes! Mothers, you shall have your children; for they shall have eternal life, for their debt is paid.”6

“Children … must rise just as they died; we can there hail our lovely infants with the same glory—the same loveliness in the celestial glory.”7

President Joseph F. Smith, the sixth President of the Church, reported: “Joseph Smith taught the doctrine that the infant child that was laid away in death would come up in the resurrection as a child; and, pointing to the mother of a lifeless child, he said to her: ‘You will have the joy, the pleasure and satisfaction of nurturing this child, after its resurrection, until it reaches the full stature of its spirit.’ …

“In 1854, I met with my aunt [Agnes Smith], the wife of my uncle, Don Carlos Smith, who was the mother of that little girl [Sophronia] that Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was speaking about, when he told the mother that she should have the joy, the pleasure, and the satisfaction of rearing that child, after the resurrection, until it reached the full stature of its spirit; and that it would be a far greater joy than she could possibly have in mortality, because she would be free from the sorrow and fear and disabilities of mortal life, and she would know more than she could know in this life. I met that widow, the mother of that child, and she told me this circumstance and bore testimony to me that this was what the Prophet Joseph Smith said when he was speaking at the funeral of her little daughter.”8

Mary Isabella Horne and Leonora Cannon Taylor each lost a young child in death. Sister Horne recalled that the Prophet Joseph Smith gave the two sisters these words of comfort: “He told us that we should receive those children in the morning of the resurrection just as we laid them down, in purity and innocence, and we should nourish and care for them as their mothers. He said that children would be raised in the resurrection just as they were laid down, and that they would obtain all the intelligence necessary to occupy thrones, principalities and powers.”

Here is the infromation regarding Nathan and Kandi's baby and his website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/babyallred

These are the words I wrote to Nathan and Kandi, the parents of this sweet and valiant little baby boy Ethan...

Dear Nathan and Kandi,

Thanks for sharing those words from the Lord's prophets on your site. It brings me comfort as well. I have a testimony of the truthfulness of those words. I know that my angel girl will be with us again, we will have time with her when we are all reunited at Home. I feel gratitude and honor at the thought that Felicity is such righteous spirit - as I know you feel the same about Ethan. When I think of our Felicity, I see her in "all her glory" - as a mature spirit, happy and hard at work side by side with others and our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ - watching over us all. I also hold dear to me the feeling that, at least throughout the rest of this mortal life, we will always have our baby Felicity to cherish. Our baby will be reunited with us in the morning of the first resurrection - and we must live in such a way to be there to greet her and hold her, and to have the privilege to raise her.

To see Felicity's web site, click on her picture down on the right of this blog.