Nauvoo is such a perfect place to spend Memorial Day. For me, Nauvoo is all about remembering. Remembering to be grateful for all of the wonderful advances technology has brought us (hooray for no longer traveling across the country by covered wagon!), remembering the beauty of the earth and a simple lifestyle, and most of all, remembering the sacrifices of the early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What a hard thing it must have been to leave such a beautiful city and existence for a future of relative uncertainty.
As Spencer and I prepared to move and sell our home, I felt a strange connection with the early saints. Obviously, I was not leaving my home under even remotely similar circumstances. No one forced us to leave. It was a choice we made of our own accord. And their journey across those same plains and mountains that we crossed stretched on for months and months and included terrible heartache and suffering. Ours took a whopping 24 hours, most of which were spent watching a plethora of redbox movies we rented before leaving. Now, listening to Grace scream and protest for the last two hours of the trip felt like terrible suffering at the time, but obviously can't even compare to what so many of the saints went through.
But all the same, I wondered if some of the emotions I was feeling were similar to theirs. Spencer and I spent a mere 9 months in our home. A home that we (along with the help of so many friends and family members) worked so hard to get and had planned on inhabiting for quite some time. It was beautiful to us. Our first real home together and the first place that we could paint, decorate, and mold to fit who we were. We spent many a Saturday mowing, watering, weeding, pruning and raking. And this doesn't include all the time we spent sanding and refinishing the wood floors, fixing various aspects of the houses physique, and painting the walls. In the end, I had a finished kitchen floor for only about 3 days before we had to leave. And then there's the whole issue of leaving the only state Spencer and I had ever known as home with all of its mountainous splendor. And don't even get me started about having to leave all of our family.
But I digress. The point of all this is to say that I can understand now what it must have been like for them (in some small degree) to leave behind such a wonderful place after such a short time and so unexpectedly. It's not easy. What faith they had. We, at least, knew that there was a place to live and a livelihood of some persuasion waiting for us. We also knew that really, no matter how far we wandered, home would always be just a plane ride (or a very long, but wholly doable car ride) away. What assurances did they have? All they knew was that Joseph Smith, as a young boy, had seen God and his Son, Jesus Christ. And nothing else mattered. That was enough. I stand all amazed.
The house we stayed in for the weekend
The Carthage grass war with Grace's new buddy, Beau
Grace at Carthage
The Linx Wives
The Linx guys
