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Minyan Man wrote:
First of all, TinSoldier, I’m sorry for the challenges your going through. Secondly, I’ve been doing family history for a number of years.This is my personal opinion: at some point through our journey through eternity. all of us will be sealed together in one big family. Don’t ask me to quote scripture or a General Conference talk. There is software that looks at your family tree in FamilySearch & compares the trees of other people in the site. It shows you all the people you are related to. Famous & Infamous. This assumes that the work is correct. For example, I found out my wife & I are 9th cousins. This maybe of some comfort. I hope it is at some level. It does help me to look at my various relationships in life with a different perspective. God Bless & keep coming back.
That brings an interesting question to my mind. Since I’m not sealed to my earthly father, I wonder how else I’m related to him. Anyone who’s used the “find relatives around you” feature knows it’s very common to be ~8-12th cousins with people, but I don’t know how I could search for a separate connection to my dad other than “father.”I was talking about finding a way for us to be sealed by proxy after we die, without us being married in this life. I’ve only heard of one instance of that happening, but I’d love to hear about others or if anyone knows of this being possible. My personal situation with temple sealings is a little different than most. In addition, I can’t be sealed to my father. My mother was widowed on her 21st birthday, during WW2. Several years later my parents were married in the temple, for time only. It took a number of years before I found someone who could tell me how this situation works out for me; apparently I’m sealed to my mother’s first husband, who died 15 years before I was born. I don’t know what sort of relationship I’ll have with my earthly father after this life, but I have to have faith it will work out. I have to wonder how it will work out in the end for him, too.
Yes, we live in the U.S.
You are correct, I don’t see how she could support herself after I pass if we get married. The only way she can claim from her “ex’s” Social Security if we get married is if he passes before I do and we don’t get married unless he passes away before I do and then we wait until she turns 62. MJ has said she believes we can be sealed eventually even if we don’t get married, or at least that it will be worked out in the end. I have to admit my faith isn’t as strong as her’s on that. And I’ve only heard of one case where someone was sealed after death when they weren’t married, and that was a couple where one party died in a handcart company and they were sealed about 150 years later. Do you know if that’s something that’s been done other times? I’d love to find out more about whether this is possible, it would bring me a lot of peace of mind.
Bitterness isn’t as much of a problem as simply finding any reason to go. I have had a few limitations for several years, but since I went on SSDI and about the same time was told I can’t hold a calling or go to the temple, I’ve been trying to find a purpose in life.
I never dreamed I’d be in this situation, but life holds surprises for all of us. I was originally married in the SLC temple, then after ~20 years and 4 kids she announced she never really preferred men and a few months later moved out. She’s remarried now to an older woman. I married again about a year later, but after about 3 years my second wife moved out. Since then I’ve come to understand I probably have Asperger’s and I’m sure that hasn’t made me the easiest to live with at times. Knowing that has helped me adjust some parts of my life, plus with my testosterone basically zeroed out for the past 9 years, plus that my body and heart are weaker from my treatments, I’m a lot more mellow these days.
Being able to get married is, unfortunately, a long-term goal we hope to achieve. In the short-term I’m trying to find reasons to get more motivated to attend on Sundays. I’m generally an introvert and sit alone in the back. A few people know me well enough to greet me, but that doesn’t include the bishop apparently. I know I can’t hold a calling and I don’t have much hope at this point of being able to go to the temple in the time I have left. Perhaps I’ll be around to see another bishop, but even then there are no guarantees. Yes there’s a lot more. For example, a couple of years ago her estranged husband called her and asked for help getting checked into the state hospital. To make this a little similar, I’ll refer to her as MJ and him as G. Over the past several years I’ve spent some time around G. We lived about 2000 away from him, but we own a small cabin nearby that we visit occasionally. He was out of a job and claimed he was waiting for the union to call him up for another assignment. We wanted to keep him in his house so since I was working on a decent gig (I was an IT contractor/consultant) at the time, I made his mortgage payments for a few months. The house was in a beach community and to complicate matters, he’d fallen behind on his payments and had to make arrangements to get caught up. That left me paying about $2400/mo for a few months. Even though I was earning good money at the time, it was a huge strain. Then my contract ended. Shortly after that is when he wanted to go into the mental hospital. We both knew if he went in, he’d probably be released within a couple of weeks and then not have a home to go back to. He’d be out on the streets, homeless, and with his stranger anxiety he would likely have fallen out of sight and not survived the year. I spoke up and said we had a room upstairs where he could stay. At that moment I was thinking in terms of it being temporary, but that was unrealistic. So now there are three of us in my house, with he “ex” and I living upstairs and her in the master bedroom downstairs. It’s hard at times having him here, but we both believe this is the right thing to do. The bishop knows about this and says as long as she’s living in a home with an adult man who is not her husband, she can’t go to the temple or have a calling. That means even if MJ and I got married, as long as G is in the house then she still has a problem. And I’ll admit, my SSDI is pretty meager so his Social Security and pension make it much easier to get by. Even as it is, we’re fairly tight, and it would have been impossible in the months leading up to my chemo when I wasn’t working and the only household income was his, before my benefits started. If he moves out we’ll figure out how to make it work, somehow. But that’s not the only reason he’s still here. He wasn’t succeeding at living on his own before, and now we can see a gradual decline that makes that even less likely. Physically he’s in pretty good shape, but his mental status is less reliable. Most of the time he’s OK, but there are times when his “crazy” really shows. People when they first meet his find that’s he’s friendly and charismatic, but if they spend more time eventually they’ll see his have some sort of meltdown.
As for MJ working, her health is not good either. Over about the past five years several different serious health problems have come up. There’s even a chance I might outlive her. At any rate, at this point in time she’s largely bedridden and unable to work.
