Tonight was a special night for my Alice. She is such a tender soul, but she's also content to be on the sidelines so it is sometimes easy for her to be overshadowed at our house.
Anyway, we only had one hour of church today due to a need to share our meetinghouse with other congregations whose building was out of power. The day was long and wonderful and after Betsey went to bed, we decided to watch "17 Miracles" as a family. The film is about the Willie Handcart Company, a group of LDS pioneers who started in Liverpool, England and ended up in the Salt Lake Valley after walking and pulling handcarts. Of course many, many of them died. Thankfully, there were meticulous journals kept and one such journal is the basis for the 17 miracles portrayed in the movie.
So I think that should do a pretty good job of setting up the moment. First, Alice said, "I'm happy crying." I was too. I think we all were. I asked her if she ever remembered having happy cried before and she said "yes, hundreds of times!" I knew she did when Betsey was born, but wasn't aware of any other times. Anyway, so we talked about why she was happy crying (we paused the movie a lot to discuss). It was just a tender moment for me to know she was six and yet capable of so much feeling, even while watching a historical account of people to whom she probably doesn't really know how to relate.
At the end of the movie, there was a father reunited with a young son. He ran to his arms and they hugged and happy cried. Alice said, "Daddy, I would never let you go (meaning on that kind of a painful, life threatening trek)! He agreed and reiterated what was motivating them to take on such a journey. Then she said, "I would go, but I wouldn't want you to go." Just thinking about that sweet statement makes me happy cry a little more.
I think you can find little miracles in every day life, but if we are talking big miracles, I'd say I have four BIG miracles in my life and Alice is one of them.
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