December 2008 – "Wakeup Call" – Part 2

Wedding Day:

Plans had long been in place for us to travel to Utah where we could get together with all of our children and grandchildren for several days. Excitement was running high for everyone, as it had been several years since all of us had been together at the same time. Three major events had been scheduled. At least, they were “major” in my mind, and I was looking forward to them with great enthusiasm. The first was the wedding of our son David to Kristy Tew on Friday, December 19th in the Jordan River Temple. Temple weddings or sealings are of great importance to our family, and David became the seventh of our eight children to get married. All of them have been married in the Temple. As Latter-day Saints, we consider it both an obligation and a privilege to enter the Temple of our God and to there take part in the sacred of ordinances of salvation. And temple marriage or sealing is perhaps the most sacred of all of those ordinances. All who wish to enter the Temple must be interviewed by men who have been called to act as judges within the church and found worthy by those men before they may go in. With even that small understanding of what the Temple means to us as a family, it might be understandable by all when as a father I was able to sit in the Sealing Room of this Temple and see all of my children gathered there along with their spouses to celebrate this special day. At the same time, I had the comforting assurance that all of my grandchildren were also in the Temple waiting for the sealing ceremony to be concluded so that they could join us in the entryway and share in the joy together as a family. Again, for those not familiar with our ceremonies, children are not allowed in the sealing rooms of the Temples for such events as these. It may seem a hard thing, but our little ones understand, and rest assured, they get to share in the wedding cake and other goodies to their hearts content.

I am grateful for all of my children and grandchildren. They are a comfort to me and a joy that I can not fully describe. And when I speak of my children, I mean both my own children and those wonderful men and women that they have married. I no longer distinguish between them. I see all of them as being my children and I love them all. We have a sign on our refrigerator door at home that says, “No Empty Chairs”. It makes allusion to that time when we have all passed through mortality and our loving Father in Heaven has called us all together and expresses our desire that we should all be gathered in together, and that in the last judgment, none of us have been found wanting. I could not help thinking that for us there were “No Empty Chairs” that day in the Jordan River Temple.