Today I went to a funeral for my friend's father. My friend's name is Micky and her father's name is Wayne. He passed away last week and I was asked to sing "Be Still My Soul" with two other friends at the funeral. We had practiced the song yesterday after church, so I felt confident that things would go smoothly. Anyways, as I sat on the pew listening to the words that were being shared, I was getting pretty emotional. In fact, I was actually worried that I wouldn't be able to make it through the song without crying!! I then turned around to look at my two friends and they were a mess too! Ugh! What to do..what to do?!?!?
In a few moments, the Bishop announced our song and we briskly walked to the microphone. As we began to sing our song, I looked out into the audience. I saw an older woman in the front row smiling at me. She looked really familiar, but I couldn't remember her name. She was sitting pretty close to the front of the room, so I knew she had to be one of Mickey's relatives. Anyways, during the song, I noticed the older woman was whispering something to the woman next to her. Within seconds, I noticed an entire pew of people were smiling at me with REALLY BIG smiles. It was a bit odd because half of the people in the room were crying while the front pew was smiling. I knew that I was going to have to speak to this older lady to see what caused all the smiling in the front row.
After the funeral ended, I walked to the front of the church to check in with Mickey. As I went to give her a hug, a tall, beautiful young woman tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Do you remember me?" As I looked at her, my life flashed before my eyes and I realized that I was standing in front of one of my old 4th grade students. Her name was Kristen. She was in my class ten years ago. The older woman in the congregation was her grandmother. Her grandfather was Mickey's uncle. In other words, I taught my friend's niece ten years ago at Florin Elementary and she was at the funeral today with her entire family. WOW! What a small world!
We chatted for a few minutes and Kristin told me she had just graduated and was attending Sacramento City College's nursing program. WOW! Definitely a proud teacher moment!
I have thought about Kristen many times over the past few years. Where did she go? What is she doing? Did she graduate? Does she have a college plan? How's her Mom? Even though I'm not her current teacher, I feel somewhat responsible for the lifelong choices she's made. Did I instill within her a desire to make the world a better place? Does she know I still care about her success even though she hasn't seen me in ten years? Wow..I know parent guilt is pretty bad, but teacher guilt is the worst!
I think Heavenly Father provides us with moments like this to make us evaluate or just think about our own purpose and plan. Life is short and we really don't have a lot of time to put our carbon or physical footprint on the earth. So..might we ask ourselves..Am I helping others with their goals? Am I being supportive? Am I setting and meeting my own goals? How am I making this world a better place and what am I doing to make others happy? In the end, we really can't take anything with us to heaven, but we will have lots of memories, friends, family....and love.
This is a perfect post! I love the whole Sandra-ness of this post. Like, 1) knowing an entire group of people randomly, 2) you having a particularly special place in someone's heart, and 3) applying your random life experiences to the Gospel. I wish there was a 'like' button here.
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