Tender Mercies

I posted a few days ago on Facebook about tender mercies, linked in a talk given in the April 2005 General Conference of the church by Elder Bednar. I'll see if I can add the link here as well.

http://lds.org/liahona/2005/05/the-tender-mercies-of-the-lord?lang=eng&query=tender+mercies 

Tender mercies are a very important topic to the group of LDS widows and widowers (hereafter referred to as W/Ws) that I am a part of on Facebook. There are almost 700 members of the group as of this posting, with more being added on a daily basis. We all come from very different parts of the world, different walks of life, different relationships in our marriages and with our children. However, we have each lost a spouse, and that is a very playing field leveling experience.

To me, tender mercies are the little things that show me Heavenly Father loves me and knows me personally. Some of the tender mercies that I have received over the past 17 months include:

1)Utter and complete peace when finding out that Tod had died. I was comforting others in their tears. Since Tod was killed in a car accident, there was the possibility to forget about what had happened as I fell asleep each night, only to have the reality come crashing back down on me each time I woke up. That never happened. For the first few weeks, every time I woke up and remembered what had taken place, I had a smile on my face and peace and comfort in my heart.
2)Tod was with the family for 6 months out of the last 3 years of his life. We chose for him to be stationed in Korea for 2 years so that he could get back to Ft. Huachuca and be with us. That never happened. He was only able to get as close as Ft. Bliss, still 5 hours away from us. Trips home for him were maybe once a month for the last 9 months. However, I feel that prepared the kids and me for the ultimate reality of his death. We were used to him being gone, in taking care of business on our own, and not looking for him to walk through the door every night. Mara makes comments to her friends, when they ask, "Don't you miss your dad?", "Not really...it's kinda like he's still deployed..." Why, yes he is, fighting battles on the other side of the veil for all of us.
3)I have been given, even in the very moment, the perfect things to say to my kids to help them understand the death of their father. Seth, when we told the kids Monday night that Tod had died, wanted to know who was going to adopt him. In his mind, only a family with two parents was where he wanted to be. I was inspired to remind Seth that there was something special for the family happening the next day that I really wanted him to participate in...would he please stay one more day? This continued for about 10 days, enough time for Seth to adjust and realize that this is his family, even if there is just one parent he can see right now.
That's what I can come up with right now...I will add more as I go along!