Jennifer

Jace's mother Jennifer emails me that she is reading my blog and she likes getting to know me better.  I am blessed in this organization with many good friends, and I think I am also tested by Satan with some sisters, because they get on my last nerve and stomp sometimes, and then I remember Satan is probably using me to step on their toes and I blithely obliviously keep treading.  Then I think no, there are just some who are our most beloved, like Jesus felt towards James.  Then I think well yeah, but Judas Iscariot was an apostle at one point too.  So sometimes I over think.
Sometimes the smallest thing someone says or does gets stuck in your head and you never forget it.  Jennifer also says I have a good memory, that I remind her of things here, even about Jamie's talks. 
I'm sure I have forgotten a lot of good talks.  Otherwise, I would not be working this hard to keep my faith awake alive and tested.  But it started me thinking about memory and getting to know each other.  I do not think in eternity I could completely know myself, so I never worry I will get bored or ever know all there is about others, creation, or our Creator.
Jennifer studied with both my girls through two books.  I wouldn't have put up with them the way she did.  They would not have put up with me the way they did her.  They were teenagers and wanted to gauge out their ears and decorate their rooms in black and go to rock concerts.  A lot of the time they had not looked at the books in advance before she got there.  After the first book, Jennifer's dad told her she should study with the girls separately in view of their ages.  So Jennifer doubled her time investment in my children. 
One semester, the day she came I was off, no classes to teach or take.  So I got into the habit of cooking double portions so I could send dinner home with for her and Jamie.  I still remember asking Jamie one Sunday what kind of pie he wanted for desert that week, and he just said in this Neanderthal kind of grunt:  "Pie."  And I said seriously, what kind, and he said, "Pie."  Ain't no bad pie in my kitchen, but I am pretty sure he was exceptionally fond of my coconut cream.
It occurred to me at the time that Jennifer was probably talking to her father, an elder in Florida, about how to reach my children better, to make progress, and that was his advice.  I didn't know what to do with them either for about three years.  Some days today I still wonder and I just go read Galatians, each one will carry his own load, and I pray.  What else is there?
So in between the girls, the race by the first one down the hall done and the dragging out of the second daughter, Jennifer would come see how the cooking was going and we would talk in my kitchen.
Those were some of the best days of my life.
So here is something Jennifer doesn't know, but I have been thinking about blogging and remembering and writing and knowing.  And I said I wish there was a blog by a sister I could read.  That the personal trials, the experiences, that might help me day to day.  I love the interview portions of the DC talks. 
Jennifer sends pictures of Jace.  That does not in any way make up for being there.  I know we will have eternity and that I will be able to spend eons with Jace next door if I so choose.  But he will not be an infant or a cranky toddler at meeting or a lovely little blue-eyed baby boy with his new backpack during any of those eons.  So, I am missing his childhood, or experiencing it very second-hand through emails and pictures.  We did go home in 2009 and meet his little one-year-old self.  He was a charmer.  A little shy, and here we were in his house and he'd look at us like what are you? 
Jennifer would bring him over to us so I could hold him but he was having none of that and I never believe in forcing a child's affection.  Mostly, because it can't be done.
He has a baby sister coming in a few months.  She'll be sleeping, as did he, on the crib mattress I bought one hot sweaty afternoon in Wal-Mart.  I like that.
When Jennifer would send new pictures, I would often dream of Jace that night, bouncing on that bed, and once I woke up crying.  Once I dreamed, when he was being an especial handful at meetings, that he flashforwarded to being 15 and giving his experience on a DC symposium of bringing a school mate into the truth and all the friends telling Jennifer to whup that boy with a big wooden spoon had to eat crow.  But maybe that is me stepping on toes, not the other way around.  We are not perfect yet.
So I'm taking all those pictures and some of Jennifer and Jamie too and making Jace a movie about being a big brother on Windows Movie Maker.  I, the least technological person on the planet maybe, can even burn it to a dvd.  I imagine Jace watching it over and over on TV.  He won't know it's from me, but I will.
You know the last music will be the new song, oh it's the one that the chorus goes:  Beloved Son and Precious Daughter, be wise and make my heart rejoice.
I'm pretty sure when Jennifer saw the pictures of Carly at the DC and read about her wanting a leather bound reference Bible, that her heart rejoiced for all those long afternoons where she worried her only reward might turn out to be a coconut cream pie.