I don't label myself cold-hearted. I'm warm-hearted. I love people. I'm seem to have lots of tender emotions towards the living. Not so much though with those departed. I have no idea why I'm such a sinner about that and I also have no idea why I always just blog my evilness. But I do. So be it.
Don't we always want to blame others for our shortcomings in character? Isn't that the appropriate behavior? As a girl, every relative of mine was living in Missouri. I was in Alaska and had been there since 5 (I think). My Mother wrote carbon paper copies of letters to the Missourian clan and Dixie and I were always made to put in a note of ...
Dear so & so,
How are you?
I am fine.
It is snowing.
I like school.
My dogs name is Cocoa.
Love,
Nancy
I knew and loved and my Grandmother Clark and my Ransdell Grandparents and adored my Aunt Bonnie. I vaguely knew the others from my little girl memory and two trips to Missouri.
Could all of that saga be to blame in some way?
Am I just an out of sight, out of mind type person?
All of this pussy-footing around just to get back to the fact that I've not felt the warm fuzzies of doing genealogy that every other active LDS woman with a testimony seems to feel! For me it's like a disconnect of non-concern if their Temple work has been done or their names are found.
I was given lots of genealogy information early on after I joined the Church, which was totally confusing to me, and eventually, my niece grew up and put it together in a more complete fashion than me. She is the one that I say...oh, my nice niece does that. Our work is all done.
Then came shifts and changes and advances in technology and the Church embraced it and put it to good use. Indexing. Specifically indexing the 1940 Census. My husband fell in love with indexing. Feeling that he would not go on a regular full-time mission, he decided that Indexing would be his Mission.
He worked at it for hours and loved it. In his overzealous ways he tried to save my sinful soul that refused to even try indexing. I gave it a couple of attempts and said it wasn't for me.
For a long time I've looked for information about the connection between this life and the life from whence I came (pat. bls.) That coupled with the thought that I needed to index and not expect any soft feelings but just view it that we have been asked to do it by the General leaders so I should do it actually motivated me recently to really give it a try. To go into it out of obedience with no expectations of confirming emotions.
Terry has been the most loving patient teacher and I have been impatient and fed-up many times. He has always straightened out my messes and encourages me. Always telling me how great I'm doing/how proud of me he is.
I decided to just plow along, realizing that maybe someday, somewhere, the information would make someone very happy. I would read about 87 year old Mabel died Tuesday at Miller's Merry Manor and not really be touched.
I was touched when I did entry number 1,928. My heart felt emotion, real tenderness and I so hoped these people heard the Gospel on this side and the other side also. 2 obituaries made a difference. One was a little 3 year old boy that died in his sleep. I felt the horror of the parent finding him that morning. The other was a father and a son, pushing strollers holding a 1 and a 3 year old. Because of lack of funds for road/sidewalk upkeep they were walking almost in the street. A truck hit and killed both children. They described the emotion of the Father seeing his little ones in the street and really, my heart came alive with compassion.
There is hope for me. Hope that I will continue to move past the letter of the law and further into the Spirit of the law. My new number is 2,329. I feel like I'm helping someone. Perhaps it will be down the road but the information is there for their use. I'm okay with just the feeling of willingness to Index, not needing endless spiritual confirmations to know this is the right thing to be doing.
No comments:
Post a Comment