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| Allie, Dianne, Dad, Emily |
Yesterday, I was in the Mount Timpanogos Temple with three of my daughters. We are pictured in front of a manger scene on a blustery day after our endowment session. It was the "warm before the storm," a fitting analogy when the sky was blue overhead and the temperature was warmer than normal for a winter day.
Today, in Pine Valley where I live up in the mountains, I awoke to blowing snow. The temperature had plunged to 20 degrees.
I am always in awe of weather patterns here in Utah. A few years ago for the first time I learned about "atmospheric rivers." That's where the upper level wind patterns set up in a direct path that points directly at us originating somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In the winter those winds aloft bring prodigious amounts of weather, usually snowstorms, with them. Like the phrase implies, the weather flows like a river with little or nothing to stop it.
Some have asked me if I intended to stay alone in my home this winter since the passing of my wife, Patsy, earlier this summer. I hadn't thought, really, about doing anything else. This is where I built my wooden "palace" in the mountains all those years ago, and it's where I thrive the most. It's familiar.
I know every nuance of this little shack. I am astounded at its appraised value today. How did that happen? At night I hear the rippling of the flag that flies just outside my bedroom window. I actually had to take it down recently to aid my ability to fall asleep. I hear the coyotes sing their lullabies.
I hear the propane boiler cycling on and off in the crawl space that heats the water circulating in the baseboard heating system. I love the sound of the crackling firewood in the wood burning stove in the other side of the house where I installed it when all I used it for was to generate heat in cool summer mornings.
And now I live here year-around and fight off the cold winter blasts that come barreling down upon me when the atmospheric river does its best to discourage me, especially when it sets up directly north in the Polar region.
Once in awhile, I hear my faithful snowplow guy outside my window when he comes early in the morning to clear the road for us. That was a steep learning curve for cousin Steve Smoot and me when we had to learn how to do it all those years ago. We managed through record-breaking 100-year winters like last year, and years when we only plowed four or five times.
Through it all, here we are, still standing as it were on a rock in the middle of the atmospheric river flowing all around us.
Now, I have a Starlink satellite internet system to link me to the outside world. It is astoundingly more robust and reliable than anything I could have ever envisioned when I put this plan in place all those years ago to live here. But new revelation was given. What did we ever do before Elon Musk?
When the wind is howling outside late at night and in the early morning hours, I can hear the wooden members that hold the structure together. I hear the wood shifting and creaking slightly. Am I ever worried about it crashing down around my head? Nope. I built it. I know why I hear what I hear, and I am seldom alarmed. I am the creator, and I know my creation. Therefore, I do not wring my hands in anxiety over what will happen to it.
I find a spiritually analogous meaning in it all. Our Father in Heaven is our Creator. He knows us all - every one of us. He has made ample provision for us.
He vouched safe our moral agency before the foundations of this Mother Earth were laid.
He knew exactly the number of His children who would come here to inhabit it.
He made the provisions for the amount of natural resources we would need to sustain ourselves.
He anticipated there would be some "bad actors" among us who would reject Him.
He also knows there are many of His children who would triumph over all their enemies and honor and serve Him.
He has raised up prophets from the beginning who would give guidance to all His children.
He gave them inspiration and revelation, and made revelation a possibility for all of us who would obey and value their writings in the scriptures.
He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to atone for all our sins.
He promised and delivered the Holy Ghost to guide us in all we do while we live here.
To which I add my humble amen, and amen, and amen.
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