I am happy, but I have an underlying sad feeling today. A young couple's little 18month old girl who fell in a canal last Saturday passed away yesterday. Her story is incredible and frightening and the fact that she lived for six days is an amazing miracle. My heart is broken for them.

It brings a lot of the sad feelings we've experienced lately to the forefront again. Chad and I keep looking at Brinley who is the same age as their little Preslee and we can't help but hold her and kiss her and just stare at her. We keep checking on the girls while their sleeping before we go to bed ourselves and end up bringing them to bed with us just to hold them and be near them. We love them so much. I can only imagine what the Sullenger family is going through right now and it literally makes my heart ache for them.

We pray for them a lot even though they're strangers. And somehow we love them even though we don't know them. I keep feeling myself trying to say that it doesn't really matter so that maybe I won't feel the ache for them, but it does matter and even though I don't know them, I do love them and because I love them I will ache for them, for their loss, for their heartache, for their pain.

It's made me think of what it means to love someone, even a stranger, to the point that it hurts. It's made me think a lot about how the Savior loves us; how Heavenly Father loves us.

"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God. and knoweth God....In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him....Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."

1 John 4:7,9,11

They loved and continue to love each of us so perfectly it's painful.

I heard this in a talk I was listening to the other day by Bruce C. Hafen called "The Disciples Journey". He was speaking of Elder Maxwell when he said, "The more he desired to have the gift of charity, to love as Christ loves, the more he sensed how dear the price might be. To love as Christ loves means we will somehow taste suffering ourselves. For the love and the affliction are but two sides of the same coin. Only be experiencing both sides can we understand and love other people with a depth that even approaches Christ's love."

So for now I won't try to ignore the ache or play it off, but I'll work through it with the hope that somehow it means because of my own heartaches my heart has become a little more willing and able to love so painfully. I hope when all is said and done that I will truly be able to love one another as Christ loves no matter the cost.