Eternal families: …

I accept, on faith, that this is a Good Thing and much to be desired. My temporal experience is such that it has to be a matter of faith, because I have a hard time wrapping my head around the possibility that family life can be sublime.

In wresting with this disconnect between promise and desire, I have found myself reflecting much on the doctrine of the Restoration. I’m referring to the Restoration that runs in parallel with the Resurrection, not the Joseph-Smith-opening-a-new-dispensation Restoration. The promise that everything will be restored to its proper frame.

On the one hand, taken at plain face value, that suggests I’ll be restored to a rather miserable family life. I choose to believe, without much evidence but because anything else has me looking into a chasm of despair, that it can be a Restoration to things as they ought to be. A wife who doesn’t betray me to a dangerous criminal but loves me forever. Betsy Pearl getting to grow up and go to Prom, however that means.

I don’t know if this makes much sense. Neither does anything else, sometimes. Mormonism does not entirely escape the problem of evil.