A time to celebrate His birth
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It was Christmas Day of 1986 that I really learned what Christmas is all about.
For the past 12 months, many members of our ward and community in Alpine, Utah, where my husband served as a counselor in the bishopric, had died. Even today, when a person walks through the cemetery in Alpine, they will notice the prevalence of the year 1986 on headstones.
To this day, it is hard to talk about that year. We were attending funerals more than once a month.
The first funeral was for a young father of nine children. Then older, beloved members of our ward family passed away.
And that summer, tragedy struck our neighborhood twice: A 2-year-old boy was killed in the driveway of a home after a missionary open house and a 10-year-old girl died while riding her bicycle. The girl's friend was seriously injured in the tragic accident.
Finally, my 60-year-old father-in-law died in his sleep at our ward campout. He just went to sleep and didn't wake up. We were heartbroken.
That fall, we lost even more ward members to death.
By December, the entire ward was looking forward to Christmas.
But on Dec. 20, tragedy struck our ward again. The other counselor in the bishopric's 2-year-old daughter drowned in their family's hot tub. On Friday, Dec. 23, 1986, ward members gathered again to mourn one of their own.
Christmas was on Sunday that year, so Christmas morning we all got up and went to sacrament meeting. The bishopric member who had just buried his daughter sat on the stand.
Like always, the organist started playing the Christmas hymns. But nobody sang. Our hearts were bruised.
We heard the music, but we couldn't sing. Our throats were swollen.
So we listened.
The messages and the music that Christmas morning brought the most powerful witness of the life and mission of the Savior Jesus Christ and of His resurrection. Suddenly, that morning became less of a time to mourn our losses and more of a time to celebrate His birth and the gift He gave us.
For me it was a very faith-promoting, testimony building Christmas.
I examined, "Is it true?" I came to know that because it is true, all things will be made whole.
