Red Ribbon Week

This week at Joseph's school is Red Ribbon Week. This means that the trees have bright red ribbons tied around them, that the kids plant tulips, and that each day they're supposed to wear something with a certain theme.

Nothing this year is too hard to find. Yesterday was "wear red" day and today is "wear your Halloween costume" day. I've heard of schools where kids are supposed to wear camo one day or "dress as what you want to be when you grow up" day. In contrast, crazy hair day and hat day aren't too hard.

Even so, I've been a little bit annoyed at having to come up with outfits for each day. "What do any of these have to do with drugs?" I wonder. What do any of these have to do with the horrible, horrible things that happen because of drugs -- the physical and mental health problems that occur, the ravenous call of addiction, the children traumatized by having parents who can't take care of them, the difficulty in holding a steady job, and the siblings and friends devastated by the loss of loved ones due to an overdose? How can you teach kids about the horrors of drug cartels, about how dangerous borders have become, how much pure evil there is in those who want to enslave and addict anybody they can?

Well, you can't really say all that to a first grader. So you say what they can, and they understand what they can, and in the meantime you do crazy hair days and hold them as close as you can.

***

Halloween always puts me in a bit of a family history mood, so on Monday I gave a lesson for Family Home Evening about what happens after we die. I explained what we do in the Spirit World and then explained that we are resurrected. It wasn't the first time we've explained it, but Joseph understood it better this time.

"We get our bodies back? And they never get sick or hurt? That's so cool!" he exclaimed.

It's not always a doctrine that means a whole lot to me. Bodies are great, but I feel like living with God and families forever matters more than living with them with a corporeal body.

Still, as I think about so many people whose lives have been hurt by drugs, whose bodies and brains have been ravaged by their effects, and who die prematurely because of them, I feel a lot of comfort as I think of the resurrection. We will see our loved ones again, and because of the resurrection, we will see them whole again.