From A Sometimes Ungrateful Son

Just a few thoughts on the anniversary of your 29th birthday.

I want you to know how much Dad -- despite his quirks and rough upbringing -- really loves you and has loved you more than anyone and anything from the time he came to know you. I remember when Juliet and I came to visit for a summer (Dad had custody for those 3 moinths) after you two had married, we were not the happiest campers. Not only were we uprooted from our mother and friends in Albuquerque, but we had to live among those weird Mormons and their quirky giant families in Utah. Even worse, we had to stay with the woman who obviously stole our dad away and was trying to take our mother's place. Never mind that we actually were safer and happier; no one was going to replace our mother without a fight. So, we set out to make life for you as miserable as possible and force our dad to abandon you for us. Surely, he would choose us (and perhaps our mother) over his Utah family, rather than risk losing us forever! Well, one day Dad took Juliet and me aside and quietly, but firmly, informed us that although he loved us and would die for us, he would not allow us to come between him and you. I do not remember much else that he said, but I remember walking away with a new-found respect for you and how much Dad must love you to tell his flesh and blood that we could not take him away from you. Now that I have developed a more eternal view of marriage and children, I better understand why he told us that you would always be number 1.

I want you to know how much I appreciate you setting me straight on loving my birth mother and the respect and gratitude I had to show her. As you know, she did some terrible things to me as I was growing up, but you taught me that was no excuse for not loving and praying for her. On one occasion as a teenager, I was bad-mouthing her to you and blaming her for the woes in my life when you abruptly and physically stopped my whining (despite you being a foot shorter and 60 pounds lighter than me). You then proceeded, with all the passion you could muster, to set me straight on motherhood and how I could not ever repay my birth mother for giving me life and, because I had the Atonement in my life to fix any sorrows I had, I should never blame my life on anything she might have done. We were both crying by the time you finished. Because of you I better understand what the Savior meant when he said: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; . . . For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye?" (Matthew 5:44, 46). It is easy to love those who love us, but if Christ could love and do good to even the worst among us and expects me to become like him, how dare I not love and and pray for my birth mother? But for your real-world tutoring, I might not have learned this essential message, and surely not so early in life.

Lastly, I want you to know that I love you as my mother for the eternities. You know that as a young man I struggled with whom to be sealed. I could be sealed to Dad and you or wait until my birth mother joined the Church or died and then be sealed to her. But I could not be sealed to both Dad and my birth mother. So, I struggled with my decision. I had little problem being sealed to you, but I feared somehow rejecting and losing my birth mother forever. Intellectually, I realized that if my birth mother and you both became exalted (and I somehow fooled the judgment bar and snuck into the Celestial Kngdom), I could enjoy eternal connections to you both, but viscerally I was not so sure. My thoughts wandered into fears that I would be condemning my birth mother if I chose you -- especially after you had convinced me that I owed her so much. Although Dad was pretty convincing in urging me to choose you, you did not make it any easier when you told me that you were fine with whatever I did and perhaps I should wait and be sealed to my birth mother. Fortunately, you also reminded me that God knew what I should do and I should fast and pray for His guidance, which I did. The answer, when it came, was simple and sweet . . . and so I was sealed to you and Dad. And I have been enormously grateful ever since.

Happy birthday on this the anniversary of your 29th birthday!

Love, Robert