Christmas Books

I was arranging my Christmas books this morning and concluded I needed to post an article I wrote eight years ago about favorite Christmas books. Happily, I still enjoy Christmas books and our family books remain the same. Sadly, of those mentioned in the article, only the Stornettas (excepting Nathan), Debra Ames, the Goulds and the Linsenmeyer's remain in New Jersey. (I've cut it from a previous document and am having trouble getting the format just right. Apologies--but I have too many Christmas tasks to fiddle with it anymore.)

It all started with the Grinch. Not only was it my son Nathan’s first Christmas, but our first Christmas in our first home in New Jersey. No longer students, we could afford to buy our first Christmas book, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, a childhood favorite of my husband Scott. The next year, we bought The Polar Express and the Stornetta holiday tradition was born: a new Christmas book every year.  

A simple tradition. (A bit like my father's tradition of buying my mother a rose for every year they had been married. It works great when you are in the single digits, but gets a bit more complicated and expensive when you are trying to explain that you want 37, yes, 37, not three dozen red roses delivered.) That is it was a simple tradition until the year Daniel’s teacher asked me to bring in a favorite Christmas story that explained Christmas. (Daniel attended a multi-cultural school with more children who did not celebrate Christmas than those who did.) I panicked. I realized I did not have a single Christmas book that accurately explained the birth of Christ. I was tempted to bring in A Night without Darkness, but I did not want to confuse the few Christian children in the class with a Nephite version of Christmas.  To the bookstore I went. I corrupted our simple tradition by returning home with a few more books than usual. And in twenty-five years, our collection has grown; at last count there were nearly one hundred holiday books, including two in Spanish, one in French as well as one about Kwanza, three about Hanukkah.

 

An important part of our Christmas book tradition is drinking hot chocolate and reading a book each night. My children are now busy with school and other activities, and we no longer have time to read a story each night.  But we still manage to squeeze in a few stories each year. We still all fondly remember Nathan’s rendition of The Grinch in Spanish several years ago, even if he was the only Spanish-speaker in our home.

As I considered our tradition, I was curious about Christmas traditions of other ward members.  So I called up a few ward members. I decided to start small, so I focused on Christmas story traditions only. Many had well-established story traditions. Several ward members also mentioned favorite movies. 

When I asked Linda White, there was no hesitation.  Her family reads A Christmas Dress for Ellen*, a true story first told by President Monson at the First presidency Christmas Devotional in 1997. Every Christmas Eve, her family reads the story about the mother of a destitute farm family in Alberta, Canada, who goes to bed on Christmas Eve saddened because she has nothing for her five children. It appears that her letters for help to her sisters in Idaho have gone unanswered. But George Schow, their mailman, braves the coming storm and bitter cold to deliver a Christmas miracle. 

Prominent on Debra Ames’ book shelf is The Forgotten Carols by Michael McLean. McLean wrote the book as a framework for several of his own Christmas carols, songs from the perspective of characters such as the innkeeper who turned the young couple away or the shepherd who slept through the angel's announcement. Every year, Debra  reads the book while listening to the carols. The story is about a nurse whose empty life is changed by her patient, John, who expands her understanding of Christmas, by introducing her to “The Forgotten Carols." 

Nancy Halterman was a little flustered when I asked her about her favorite Christmas book. Her family has about five they like to read each year. Forced to choose just one, Nancy chose The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, a favorite also mentioned by Kerrie Samuels.  Jonathan Toomey, the best woodcarver in the valley, is always alone and never smiles. No one knows really understands that his is still mourning the loss of his wife and child.  The miracle begins one early winter's day, when a widow and her young son approach him with a gentle request. 

In a display of loyalty, Jonathan Linton mentioned The Christmas Box (and it’s sequel, The Christmas Box Timepiece) as one of his favorite Christmas stories. (Jonathon has illustrated three of author Richard Paul Evans children’s books.) The story about a young couple, Richard (who narrates) and Keri, who accept a position to care for a lonely widow, Mary Parkin, in her spacious Victorian mansion, was a national best-seller. Their tender relationships, fraught with real-life struggles, are the backdrop for unraveling a mysterious secret that gently propels the reader through this short story. 

When I asked Jonathan if there were any childhood favorites whose illustrations he enjoyed, he mentioned two:  Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Book and Jolly Old Santa Claus. The first book, put together by Molly Rockwell, a granddaughter-in-law to the illustrator, combines Norman Rockwell’s Christmas illustrations with Christmas carols, stories, poems and recollections. There are 83 full color and 12 black and white plates of Rockwell’s illustrations and excerpts from such authors as Shakespeare, Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Ogden Nash.  

 

The second book is a complete collection of Santa paintings by German-born artist George Hinkle. The classically trained artist illustrates Santa’s preparations for Christmas and his travel on Christmas Eve in beautiful oil paintings. The book, which was first published in 1961, is now available in an anniversary reprint. Jonathon notes the reprint is not quite as good as the original.  

According to Andrew Croshaw, their family reading tradition started quite by accident.  When they were first married, they were given Boyd K. Packer’s A Christmas Parable as a stocking stuffer. When Christmas was over, the book got packed away with their Christmas decorations. So each year when they unpack their Christmas box, they read President Packer’s story of a man whose strange dream during a difficult Christmas season awakens him to the reality of the Savior's atonement. 

Laura Wardle’s favorite story is also one of my favorites, A Christmas Memory, a memoir of Truman Capote. The seven-year-old narrator and his “friend,” a distant, eccentric, elderly cousin prepare several dozen fruitcakes and mail them to people they admire. Gathering the pecans from those left behind in the harvest, buying illegally made whiskey for soaking the cakes, cutting their own tree, and decorating it with homemade ornaments are some of the adventures the two share. This book is a companion piece to Capote’s The Thanksgiving Visitor, his memoir of inviting the class bully to Thanksgiving dinner.

Sheyrl Neville listed Christmas Oranges, a tale about an orphan who is punished on Christmas day and denied the orange she had been anticipating for weeks.  Her miracle is how the other children help her get the treat. After describing the book, however, Sheyrl confessed it was not books, but Christmas movies she loved at this time of year. Both Bishop Gould and Kerrie Samuels expressed the same sentiment. 
 

The Stornetta family favorites? Scott has The Grinch who Stole Christmas practically memorized. My favorite?  Christmas Day in the Morning, a beautifully illustrated version of Pearl S. Buck’s story found in many Primary manuals about a boy who rises extra early to do his father's biggest chore, the milking.  Chrissy has already claimed our copy of The Polar Express.  She crayoned her name, complete with a backward ‘s’ inside the front cover years ago. (She refuses to see the movie for fear it has corrupted her childhood story.) Nathan’s favorite is Santa Calls, a clever story about Santa helping a young girl solve her sibling rivalry problems. (It became his favorite at a time he felt overshadowed by his sister.) Daniel likes all of our favorites as well as Auntie Claus, a delightful story about the sister of Santa Claus.

When I questioned a few ward members, they gave me a strange stare and paused for an awkward moment before they suggested that the scriptural accounts of Christ’s birth were their required holiday reading.  These ward members reminded me of Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas who conveys the strength, beauty, and simplicity of Christ’s birth in his recitation of Christ’s birth from Luke.  Like Linus, Billie Eckert gets her Christmas spirit from the scripture accounts. Or as Dottie Linsenmeyer noted that although she likes Dicken’s A Christmas Carol because it “captures a lot of the Christmas spirit,” Luke 2 is her favorite Christmas story. Bishop Gould’s family uses the scriptures as a basis for a small family enactment of the Christ’s birth each year.

So there you have it:  a small, informal, by no means complete report of some of the Christmas reading traditions of some Morristown ward members.  
 

* Plagiarism note:  Most of the book descriptions above are not original. I have taken them from book flaps or summaries of the books by journals.  Most descriptions of the movies come from imdb.com.

Favorite Christmas Stories of Morristown, New Jersey Ward Members (2005)

Bethers, Linda.  Christmas Oranges.  Illustrated by Ben Sowards.  American Fork, Utah:  Covenant Communications, Inc:  2002.

Buck, Pearl S.  Christmas Day in the Morning. Illustrated by Mark Buehner. New York:  Harper Collins Publishers, 2002. 

Capote, Truman. A Christmas Memory. Illustrated by Beth Peck. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1989.

Evans, Richard Paul. The Christmas Box. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Joyce, William. Santa Calls. New York: A Laura Geringer Book, 1993.  

McLean, Michael. The Forgotten Carols. Rev ed. Salt Lake City, Utah: Shadow Mountain, 2003.

Monson, Thomas S.  A Christmas Dress for Ellen. Illustrated by Ben Sowards. Salt Lake City, Utah:  Deseret Book, 2004.

Packer, Boyd K. A Christmas Parable. 2^nd ed. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1993.  

Primavera, Elise. Auntie Claus. New York: Silver Whistle, 1998.

Robinson, Timothy.  A Night without Darkness:  A Nephite Christmas Story. Illustrated by Jim Madsen.  Salt Lake City:  Deseret Book, 1999.

Rockwell, Molly. Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Book. New York: Abrams, 1977.

Suess, Dr.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas. New York:  Random House, 1957.

------.  Como El Grinch Robo La Navidad!  Trans. Yanitzia Canetti.   New York: Lectorum Publications, Inc., 2000.

Tonn, Mary Jane.  Jolly Old Santa Claus. Nashville, Tennessee: Ideal Publishers, Inc., 1996.

Van Allsburg, Chris. The Polar Express. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1985.

Wojciechowski, Susan. The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey. Illustrated by   P.J. Lynch.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 1995.

On the 175th Anniversary of the Saints in New Jersey: Lessons Learned

Elder Marlin K Jensen, of the first quorum of the Seventy noted in April 2007 conference, when he was serving as the Church historian, that “Remembering enables us to see God’s hand in our past, just as prophecy and faith assure us of God’s hand in our future. . . .Keeping our past alive, . . . connects us to the people, places, and events that make up our spiritual heritage and, in so doing, motivates us to greater service, faith, and kindness.”

Today, I have been asked to speak about the 175^th anniversary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New Jersey. Studying that history has helped me to see God’s hand in our past. Today, I will discuss several of the lessons I have learned as I have studied that history. I hope that as I share these lessons, you, too, will “see God’s hand in our past,” and that doing so will not only “connect you to “to people, places, and events of our” shared “spiritual heritage,” but also that you will, like I, be “motivated to greater service, faith and kindness.”

Lesson 1: The Lord wants all to have the opportunity to embrace the gospel.

Samuel H. Smith, the first missionary began his first mission nearly three months after the organization of the Church. In February 1832, Elders Orson Pratt, and Lyman E. Johnson, less than two years after the organization of the Church, set out on a mission that included New Jersey.

Lesson 2: The Lord organizes his members under the priesthood. That organization facilitates the growth of the Church and its individual members.

Two missionaries, Benjamin Winchester and Jedediah Grant were particularly successful in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and in October 1838, they organized 28 members in Hornerstown (which is now part of Upper Freehold) into the first official branch of the Church in New Jersey. Soon after a branch was organized in Toms River. The next year Parley P. Pratt organized a branch in Jersey City. Organizing the members into branches allowed the Church to grow.

The missionaries were successful in New Jersey, especially in Burlington and Monmouth counties. In 1840, the branch in Cream Ridge reported 100 members. Even though many who were baptized moved to join the main body of the Church in Nauvoo, there were nearly 200 members in Cream Ridge and Toms River in 1842. At one point Erastus Snow preached to a crowd he estimated to be 1000 people. The members built a meetinghouse in Hornerstown, and one local historian commented that there was a “Mormon invasion.”

In fact, in 1848, one year after Brigham Young arrived in Utah, there were 21 branches of the Church in New Jersey—more than there were in Utah.

Lesson 3: Every part of the Kingdom of God is important, even New Jersey (the incredulous italics suggesting how some of our western friends might feel about New Jersey).

During the Nauvoo period, there appeared to be frequent interchange between the saints in Nauvoo and New Jersey, which strengthened all the saints. New Jersey saints visited Nauvoo—William Appleby, a prominent leader in New Jersey, visited Nauvoo in 1841 to perform baptisms for his kindred dead. Missionaries and church leaders from Nauvoo brought directives from Church leaders. New Jersey saints contributed to causes in Nauvoo, such as the building of the temple.

In fact, in December of 1839 and January of 1840, during his trip to Washington, D.C. to seek redress from the federal government for the Saints’ losses in Missouri, the prophet Joseph Smith visited several branches in New Jersey. He preached at Cream Ridge and visited saints in New Egypt, Hornerstown and Toms River. Hundreds listened to the prophet preach and he baptized many. Dramatically he healed a lame boy.

These events led one historian of Ocean County to list Joseph Smith’s visit as one of the “eight principal events in the town’s history. “ Some speculate that Nauvoo, New Jersey, a small fishing village (now a section of present-day Sea Bright) was named soon after Joseph Smith’s visit to New Jersey.

Lesson 4: Latter-day Saints can spread their influence by being part of their communities.

According to one history, at one point the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the principal religion in Toms River. Prominent church members, such as the Ivins family sought to be a positive influence. And when Ocean County split from Monmouth County, the Mormon meetinghouse was used as the county courthouse.

Lesson 5: The Church is strengthened when Church members heed the counsel of their prophets and apostles.

Latter-day Saints in the second half of the 19^th-century heeded the counsel of their leaders to gather to Zion in the Rocky Mountain West. By 1846, Brigham Young had issued the call to immigrate west.  Hundreds of New Jersey Saints heeded that call.  Among those were John Horner and Elizabeth Imlay, who left New Jersey the day after their marriage to join Samuel Brannan, and the saints traveling west via the ship Brooklyn. I confess I would hardly consider a six-month voyage with 238 saints in those close quarters a fit honeymoon cruise.

After his father, who was not a member of the Church died, Anthony Ivins, formed a company of saints from Toms River. Together the small band traveled by train and steamboat to Independence and then crossed in plains arriving in Utah in August 1853. Ivins’ son Anthony Woodward, not yet a year old, would later serve twenty-seven years in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency.

I am certain the youth of our stake, who only two months ago participated in a reenactment of the handcart trek, appreciate the sacrifice of Augustus Embley Pearce and his wife Caroline Pullen Pearce from Burlington County and their eight children ranging in age from an infant to 15. In Nebraska, the family joined the Daniel Robison company, the second to last company to pull handcarts. Their youngest child, Georgeanna, was only two months old when they started the 1,030 miles trek across the plains on June 6, 1860. 

And just as the early saints heeded the prophet’s call to gather to Zion, so 20^th-century saints heeded later prophets who urged them to build up Zion in New Jersey. In 1918 and 1922 the Hoboken and Newark Branches were organized and by 1933, Heber J. Grant, whose mother was a New Jersey native and his father a missionary to New Jersey, came to New Jersey to dedicate the first church-owned building in New Jersey, a former termite-ridden former recreational clubhouse rebuilt by the 200 members of the Newark branch. (That building was later demolished in the 1950s to make way for the Garden State Parkway.)

It was the efforts of these saints, who also followed the prophet’s counsel, that allow us to now enjoy the association of our fellow 33,000 saints in New Jersey today.

Lesson 6: Latter-day Saints should persist in being prepared.

For many New Jersey saints the journey to Utah was daunting. These saints first needed to raise the means to get to the Midwest in order to join a pioneer company. Often it took months or years to prepare. And some never lived to make the trek, but many prepared nonetheless. As one historian noted:

A singular condition of affairs in several homes there was that some of the furniture and household goods which had been made ready for packing, years previously, in anticipation of removing to Salt Lake, still remained in the same condition, hoping that they would yet be called to join their brethren in that western city of the Saints. But for some of them that time never came.

Andrew Scott Hunter provides an example of the persistence required to prepare for the journey west. During a visit to Nauvoo in 1845 to attend the temple, he was counseled by Brigham Young to prepare for the journey west. He returned home to New Jersey to settle his business. Unfortunately only a few weeks before he was to depart for the west, he was felled by a severe illness. By the time he was well, all his funds had been expended in caring for his family during his illness. 

Determined to earn the funds for the journey, he began another business and in a few years had once again prepared to depart. When he returned from a trip to Philadelphia, he discovered that his wife had left him, stripping everything of value from his home. Undaunted, he sold what his wife had not taken and with his two children joined a company of Philadelphia saints on their journey west.

Lesson 7: The sacrifice of faithful Latter-day Saints can have immeasurable impact on all the members of the Church.

Perhaps my favorite story is that of New Jersey native Rachel Ridgeway Ivins Grant. When she was 20, at the urging of a friend, Rachel, a Baptist, went to hear Joseph Smith preach at Cream Ridge. Though she found the prophet to be a “fine, noble looking man . . . so neat,” she was not at all impressed with his sermon. After she returned at her friend’s urging to hear Joseph Smith a second time, she prayed for forgiveness for listening to false doctrine on the Sabbath. Yet she continued to attend meetings, and eventually she read the Book of Mormon, which so captivated her, she completed it in a single night. She embraced the gospel.

In the spring of 1842, she moved to Nauvoo, but after Joseph Smith’s death she returned home to Toms River where she lived for the next nine years. Finally, at age 32, she traveled with her cousin Anthony Ivins to Utah. Two years after arriving in Utah she married Jedediah Grant, whom she had met 16 years earlier when he had been a missionary in New Jersey. 

After only one year and two months of marriage, Jedediah died of typhoid and pneumonia, leaving Rachel a widow, in poor health following a difficult childbirth. Her son Heber was only nine days old. Her nonmember relatives urged her to return to New Jersey, promising to meet all her financial needs if she would return to New Jersey, leaving behind the Church. Instead, despite her abject poverty, she chose to raise her son, Heber Jedediah Grant, the seventh president of the Church, in Utah with the saints.

Lesson 8: In fulfilling my callings, I really have no reason to complain.

For the past 24 years I have visit taught or been visit taught by Sister Marion Van Uitert, who moved to Morristown with her husband LeGrande nearly 60 years ago. Whenever I am tempted to complain about the distance I have to travel or the time an assignment will take, I recall her tales of yore.

In particular I remember the “extra miles” it took for her to magnify her callings. Frequently she was required her to go into New York City for regular stake leadership meetings.  These regular treks into the city were made in the days before Accu-weather forecasts.  After one such evening meeting, she did not return home until the next morning. She and her fellow travelers had been caught in a sudden, severe snowstorm necessitating their spending the entire night slowly creeping along the highway home.

Lesson 9: I am grateful that I can I worship in the Morristown Stake Center each Sunday.

Many years ago I heard Al Rust describe stories of building this chapel, which was dedicated in 1978. In those days members not only raised the funds for their buildings, but they also donated their time to build the buildings. I remember his story about I am grateful that he and other members, undoubtedly President Jones included, laid brick upon brick and painted stroke after stroke to create a building in which I can worship each Sunday.

All of these lessons humble me. I hope they humble you as well. At times, we Latter-day Saints view our history and the growth of our Church in a self-congratulatory manner, patting ourselves on our backs, as we calculate statistics to chart the wondrous progress we have made in 175 years.

But 175 years is nothing.

As we consider the vast history of the world and the endlessness of eternity, we should be humble. When the Lord revealed to Moses the entire history of the world Moses was dumbfounded: “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.”  Moses was both surprised and humbled when he saw the vastness of history and eternity.  And yet the Lord reminded him a few verses later that all of this, the worlds without number, was for him and for us in verse 39 when he stated that “This is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality of man.”

That we may humbly remember our place in God’s plan, which end is to bring us eternal life, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

When I am a good mother, which I have not been lately, I write my boys emails every day, full of the prattle and pratfalls of every day life. When I am being oh-so-clever I will pick a theme. In April, one theme, inspired by Eliza Dawson in a Relief Society lesson, was joy. I wrote about the moments of joy each of my children has inspired.

Here is my moment of Joy inspired by Nathan, who has heard this story many, many times, and yet still politely smiles when I repeat it.

 

On Thursday, April 13, 1989, my daughter Chrissy was diagnosed with diabetes. (Isn't it funny how those dates are forever seared in our memories?) As is the case with nearly everyone diagnosed with Type I diabetes, the diagnosis took me by surprise. One day I had a happy-go-lucky preschooler, twirling to her heart's content in her tutu, the next I had a child defined by a chronic illness.  That Thursday afternoon I drove Chrissy to the doctor and in a matter of minutes I was arranging for a babysitter for three-month-old Nathan and then driving my tired, precious daughter to the hospital. I was tired, I was devastated, and I was overwhelmed.

We got her admitted. Everything was a blur. Doctors coming in and out. Endless histories taken--because Stanford University Hospital is a teaching hospital it had a lot of medical students and interns practicing the fine art of taking medical histories, whose attendings then followed up by reviewing the histories yet again. I repeated her medical history what seemed like dozens of times. I was exhausted. She was exhausted. They put her in a ward--she was put in a crib, not a particularly happy thing for a big girl sleeping used to sleeping in her own big girl bed. There was also a room at the end of the hall in which either I or your father would spend the night. We gave specific instructions tp the staff  to wake us whenever they tested Chrissy blood sugar every few hours--which they did not always do--because we did not want her having tests without one of her parents nearby.

The hospital stay was a whirlwind. Dieticians, doctors, social workers, nurses. All visiting. All trying to assess us as parents and teach us what we needed to do for Chrissy. I was up most of one night trying to memorize all the rules and interactions of insulin. In order for the hospital to release Chrissy, we needed to demonstrate our knowledge of insulin as well as our ability to care for Chrissy. First, both Mom and Dad had to be able to test her blood sugar and inject her with insulin. We had to understand the diet--which at that time was an exchange diet. And most importantly, I needed to know how her little body reacted to insulin. This was in the days before humalog--we used humulin and NPH insulin then. Humulin was a short acting insulin, which peaked 2 hours after giving it and lasted 4-6 hours, and NPH was a long-lasting insulin, which peaked 6 to 8 hours after an injection and stayed in the body for 12 plus hours. We needed to know how to adjust her food intake to the peaks of the insulin. (Little did we anticipate then the challenge of getting a child to eat at precisely the right time.)

We also needed to know not only how to give the injection, but als how to prepare it. Chrissy received two shots a day with both types of insulin, which had to be mixed in the same syringe precisely and one could not allow the NHP to contaminate the humulin, so the order in which the insulin were drawn into the syringe had to be followed precisely. The NPH insulin needed to be rolled to mix it, there could be no air in the syringe, and the amount of insulin we were giving was so small that it was difficult to measure it precisely. I studied and practiced far more intently than I had ever studied any subject before. I was so afraid I would fail my daughter by not being able to pass the test so that she could go home. And, of course, this was just the mechanics of the illness. Chrissy was baffled as to why her caring parents parents were now pricking her finger several times a day and injecting her twice a day.

I spent that first night at the hospital with Chrissy. Dad actually had a job interview with Apple Computer the next day, which he went to. (If only they had hired him.) Then on Friday night Dad spent the night at the hospital. I had spent the day learning what foods Chrissy could and could not eat. (Again because the insulin was less adaptable than the humalog is now, the food intake needed to be precisely planned and calculated.) So I went home, emptied the shelves of my cupboards of the now forbidden foods, picked up Nathan from the babysitter and we went to Lucky's--a grocery store now subsumed by some other conglomerate.

I sat Nathan in the grocery cart. He was able to sit in it if I held his hands--just like Adella can now. Aimlessly, I wandered the aisles. I felt helpless. I was overwhelmed. I look at the blur of cardboard boxes and cans. I did not know what to put into my cart. How was I going to make it through what was demanded of me?

And then I looked up at Nathan.

It was one of those moments, which if captured on film, would have baby Nathan bathed in light with a slight halo effect over his head. Undoubtedly there was no such halo, except in my mind. Undoubtedly, the store aisles were brightened by fluorescent light. But his smile, a smile so broad that his little body moved with it, a smile so bright and complete that it reflected in a twinkle in his eyes, oh so bright, changed me. My soul was lifted. I knew everything would be all right.

I have remembered that moment many, many times over the years. I can remember the little white with blue polka dot knit overall with a teddy bear on it that Nathan was wearing, I can remember his stance in the cart, the direction the cart was facing in that cereal aisle. Most of all his smile, I remember the smile. Nathan, as were all of my babies, was naturally adorable. And he was only doing what all naturally adorable children do when they are three and a half months. He was smiling. (In fact, that's about all babies that age can do--except eat and poop.) But that smile and the light in his eyes gave me what I most needed in that moment of despair. Hope. I knew everything was going to be all right.

Joy comes in moments unexpected, in places unexpected, from sources unexpected, and gives us the hope to carry on. And those simple, short, small everyday moments of Joy last a lifetime.

Thank you Nathan.