Tell Me He Loves Me

A couple of years ago, I had a mole that changed shape and color only I don’t know when. It was on my back and it was difficult for me to see it so when I did look at it in the mirror and saw it, I was immediately frightened. I made an appointment with the doctor, certain that it was cancer. He thought it looked abnormal also, so he did a biopsy and I had to wait for the results. Waiting was not fun. Being the excessive worrier that I am, I started to think that not only was it cancer, but it had metastized and that I might die.

It wasn’t the pain and the treatments that I kept thinking about, but my children. I was sad to think that maybe they wouldn’t have their mother when they went to prom, left on a mission, got married and had grandchildren. But as sad as I was thinking of that, I was more concerned with the thought, “Did I teach them everything they need to know to be happy and to follow Heavenly Father’s plan for them?” It really came down to basics to me. I needed to make sure that they knew that Heavenly Father is real, that He knows them individually and has special blessings and missions for each one of them and especially that He loves them. I felt that if they really knew and believed that, then they would be able to make good decisions (with mistakes thrown in along the way, of course) and return to our Heavenly Father and also into my arms one day.

It turned out that I did not have cancer, but I learned some things from that experience. One of them being that I shouldn’t expect the worst outcome in a situation. But also that I really do need to help my children gain a knowledge of their divine destiny and to have experiences where they feel their Heavenly Father’s love.

Recently, I heard part of a song on the radio which I had never heard. It had a beautiful message. I only heard the last part of the song. When I tried to look it up online, I remembered it was something like, “Tell me once again that He lives. Tell me once again how much He loves me.” I finally found a short clip here so I went out and bought the CD. Sorry I couldn’t find it online for you to listen to it all, but here are the words (as I hear them since the written lyrics weren’t included).
Tell Me Once Again written by Jeff Goodrich (composer of I Heard Him Come, a beautiful song)

I gently turn the pages
And contemplate each sentence,
Imagining the faces and places,
How they might have been
Like letters from a loved one,
Lines that teach of God’s son
Fill my heart with peace.
And I can hardly speak,
Reading them again

So, tell me once again that He lives.
Tell me one more time how He thinks of me.
Tell me that He cares and forgives.
And tell me once again how much He loves me.

Tell me once again that He lives.
Tell me one more time how He thinks of me.
Tell me that He cares and forgives.
And tell me once again just how much He loves me.

Amid the constant pressures,
All the world’s commotion,
I gather modern witnesses near
And let their power surround me.
I know of nothing kinder
Than the sweet reminder.
His arms are open still
And even now they will
Circle around me.

So, tell me once again that He lives.
Tell me one more time how He thinks of me.
Tell me that He cares and forgives.
Tell me once again how much He loves me.

Tell me once again that He lives.
Tell me one more time how He thinks of me.
Tell me that He cares and forgives.
Tell me once again
Just how much He loves me.

Although I pictured at first when I heard this song that a child was asking her mother to tell her again about Heavenly Father, it is about a woman wanting to hear for herself again how much she is loved. It really is fundamental for all of us, whatever our age, to feel loved and wanted and special. I know that in my life, when I have had to make difficult decisions or resist temptations, I’ve been given the power to do it by my knowledge of God’s plan. I want to obey Him to show Him that I love Him.

What is it the very first part of the young women’s theme? We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us, and we love Him. Why is it first? It is the foundation upon which all other truths rest and it is the first thing we must come to know before we can understand why we should follow the commandments. It can anchor us and help us to know we are never alone. Our children may say, “I know, Mom” when we testify again about Heavenly Father, but they do crave to know that it is true.

“The knowledge that we are the children of God is a refining, even an exalting truth. On the other hand, no idea has been more destructive of happiness, no philosophy has produced more sorrow, more heartbreak, more suffering and mischief, no idea has contributed more to the erosion of the family than the idea that we are not the offspring of God...” Elder Boyd K. Packer March 1992, “The Fountain of Life,” 18-Stake BYU fireside, published in Things of the Soul.

We were once with our Heavenly Father, even though we do not remember it. But someday we will see Him again.

President Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) once said, “Nothing is going to startle us more when we pass through the veil to the other side than to realize how well we know our Father and how familiar his face is to us” (quoted in Ensign, May 1991, 66).