In the Economy of Heaven

A happy and blessed Easter to all y’all.

I read this article during a sanity break at work on Friday. She captures beautifully what I think and feel about Easter, 32 years post-baptism.

Speaking of church, Middlest asked when we have our block of meetings. I’ll email you that information, just in case there are any irreligious burglars reading my blog. Plus, after next week that might change, but I’ll go into that later. Suffice it to say that our schedule and Secondborn’s ward schedule are sufficiently offset that I was able to dash over for sacrament meeting in her ward, which they have first in their block of meetings, and then back home for our meetings, where sacrament comes last. [There are two options for how the three meetings in a three-hour block are arranged; it’s my understanding that the stake president decides which arrangement would be best for the wards in his stake.]

Thus killing several birds with one stone: a smidgen of quiet time with my Bitties, a blip on the radar screen of a certain brother, and a mutual-non-acknowledgment-of-existence with the minor politician I dated briefly. Enabling me to be back in our ward for my duet with LittleBit in sacrament meeting, where we reprised the hymn we sang/signed last week in Relief Society.

We were supposed to reprise it last week in sacrament meeting, but one of the speakers ran long. There was much murmuring among the “sistren”, but today I understood why that one brother went over his allotted time last week. The mother of one of our ward members is deaf; she and her husband were visiting from out of state this weekend. Her husband sat in front and interpreted most of the meeting. When LittleBit and I got up to sing/sign “How Great Thou Art”, he got to sit in the front row and relax for a moment. And I had a real, live deaf person to sign for. In the economy of Heaven, there is an elegance and wisdom that surpasses mortal understanding.

The reason that I’ll have to wait until next week to let Middlest know what time we meet for church, is that next Sunday we are having a stake sacrament meeting [something like unto stake conference, with the exception that we will all take the sacrament together, which doesn’t happen at stake conferences]. Why, you ask? Because they are reconstituting Second Ward, which was dissolved five years ago, shortly after LittleBit and I moved into our current ward. The last change threw Fourthborn and her father into our new ward; while I was happy to have her in our ward, as for him, well, I just sat there and sobbed. Audibly. He and I have lived within three miles of each other for the past ten years since the divorce. It has made visitation easy for him; it has not always made church easy for me. Particularly when he was the Gospel Doctrine [adult Sunday School] teacher in the old ward.

So, we know that they will be pulling talent and leadership out of several wards, in order to staff the resurrected Second Ward. And we know that our ward will be affected, because only those wards that will be affected, have been invited to the stake sacrament meeting. And we are invited. And we don't know where the new ward boundaries will be, and we know that two weeks from now, some of us will be attending church in my old building. So it made for a poignant Relief Society birthday party yesterday, as they presented a slide show of all the active sisters in the ward as it now exists. And it made for a tender Sunday School class today, as we don’t know who will be gone next time we meet [including, possibly, our Gospel Doctrine teacher]. And after our duet and the choir Easter program, our dear bishop stood and gave us some heartfelt, encouraging words, at which point I was a soggy mess, particularly when the organist played “God Be With You Till We Meet Again” as postlude music.

So in a bit of comic relief that I hope does not detract too much from the Easter spirit, I offer what my long-ago roommate, Shellz, sent me. I thoroughly enjoyed this. [The background looks like my house did when I had hordes of short people.]

I picked up a couple of movies on my way to the party last night. [Had a blast; flirted not at all; brownies were a real hit.] And I’ve had a short but hopefully not sleep-wrecking nap. So I’ll be off to help Johnny Depp find Neverland, or maybe I'll just hang out with The Jane Austen Book Club. I’ll let you know what I think of both movies, later.

The heel is turned and the gussets complete on Middlest’s second sock. I imagine that more progress will occur during the movie(s).