"For everywhere she went, Marjorie Hinckley left everyone she met better and happier and more confident than she found them" (54).
When her daughter lived in Hawaii and missed the fruit her family grew at home, Marjorie wrote her and said, "'Don't grieve over the cherries. Enjoy the pineapples and mangoes.' . . . There was never a need to focus on what she didn't have" (57).
Sheri Dew writes, "I am deeply grateful for the privilege of knowing a woman whose life has touched so many of us and from whom we have all learned much: That living the gospel is the only way to be happy, and that being happy is a choice. That it is possible for a woman to be intensely supportive to her husband while continuing to grow herself. That when a righteous man and woman commit to each other completely, the bond is impenetrable and eternal. That an unpretentious woman filled withe the pure love of Christ and devoted to Him can move about the entire earth and leave everyone she meets better than she found him or her. That a testimony of Jesus Christ is what undergirds it all. And that it really is possible, in the latter part of the latter days, to do what we came here to do, and to do it with joy" (60-61).
President Hinckley once said, "all of us are largely the product of the lives [that] touch [ours]."
I was reading all this tonight and hoping I could be more like Sister Hinckley. And this made me think of what I learned last night in my reading: that hope is firm. It is not uncertain, but a knowledge that things will be better. It's hard to believe when I look at myself now, but I know that when I hope I can be more like her, it really is possible and that if I keep trying, one day I'll get there.
No One Can Take Your Place by Sheri Dew
