“I Want to Live with You Forever!” Ensign, January 2017
Our Homes, Our Families
I Want to Live with You Forever!
The author lives in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
The faith of a six-year-old helped me find my faith again.
When I was 22, my life took an unexpected turn: my mother passed away. She and my father were people of great faith, and they had raised me in the gospel. After her death, my father moved away from our country to the United States. As time went by, I began to feel very lonely since I am my parents’ only child. I did not have my mother with me here on the earth, and my father lived far away; I only saw him for three weeks out of the year.
It was with those feelings that I began to increasingly seek refuge in my “friends” from college and from the office where I was working. Little by little, I began to find false happiness in temporal things. I stopped attending church, and I gradually became completely inactive. Later, I married a wonderful young man who, though he had very good principles, did not know about the gospel. We had three children: Leah, Isaac, and Ismael.
Illustration by Kelley McMorris
One October, my father came to visit and see the new baby. During his visit, six-year-old Leah asked her grandfather why he never brought her grandmother with him. My father then explained to her that Grandmother was in a very special place close to Heavenly Father. As soon as my father left, Leah forcefully told me, “Mom, I want to meet Grandma. I know she is in heaven, but I also want us to be there together someday—Grandma and Grandpa, Dad, Isaac, Ismael, and you, and me. I want to live with you forever. I want us to be the same family up there that we are down here so we can play with Grandma!”
I did not know what to say. I touched her beautiful, innocent face, and then I walked off to my bedroom. I fell on my knees and cried until I ran out of tears. I asked Heavenly Father for forgiveness. I knew that I had left the path that would allow us to live together as an eternal family. I had failed in my responsibility to lead them along the right path, and I had failed to talk to my husband about the gospel.
When I was able to stand, I contacted a Church leader, and he put me in contact with the elders in my ward. The following night, they came and taught my husband. From that night on, our lives changed forever. Now we attend church every Sunday as a family. I have a calling that allows me to help less-active sisters. We are also preparing to attend the temple.
The Spirit of God sometimes guides us through those we least expect. This time it happened through my six-year-old daughter. I now know that by being sealed in the temple, I can live with my family forever.