The complexities of the family...

Many of us that visit this site are active Mormons, or members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. For those of you that are not, we would like to emphasize the importance of family here on earth. It seems as though the world would like to spend more time outside the home, rather than in the home, together as a family. When things come up about the church and the many misconceptions of it, I know that I cannot fully explain all the gospel principals to clear any of these. So, I often think that if I could only show the world how the church emphasizes the importance of having a loving family, maybe then a lot of the negative feelings would be disolved. I have never, and will never impose my beliefs on anyone, but I want to at least share a broadcast that may ease any ill feelings someone you may know has of our church.

You can visit Lds.org; world leadership broadcast (Feb 2008, roundtable discussion) to listen to the entire broadcast, or read the script. I want to post a few of my favorite parts.


This is a roundtable discussion which includes: Elder Dallin H. Oaks (quorum of the 12 apostles), Jeffrey R. Holland (quorum of the 12 apostles), Julie Beck (Relief Society General President, Susan Tanner (Young Women General president), Cheryl Lant (Primary General President).
Sister Tanner
I grew up in a home where there was a very good marriage, but I remember my mother saying over and over to me, “This is work; to have a good marriage is hard work.” She wasn’t saying that they didn’t have a good marriage, but she meant that you never let a day go by without thinking about blessing the partner in your marriage and working on this and thinking about his or her needs.

Sister Lant
You talked about being willing to do the work that it takes. Having children is a lot of work. And we have to not be afraid of that, because it’s that very element of working hard and being willing to do whatever it takes that makes us who we are. It’s the sacrifice that makes us who we are. I want to bear my testimony of the joy that comes from having families, from having children, because there’s not only the commandment from the Lord to do it, but there are great promised blessings.

Elder Oaks
While we’re talking about this, what does it mean that the family comes first? We say that, and we believe it, but what does it mean that the family comes first?
I want to use your eyeglasses to use a metaphor from Neal Maxwell. He suggested on another subject that we write something on the inside of our glasses so that whenever we looked at any subject, we see that message. And we might say that when you put your spectacles on to look at decisions about how the family will use its time or decisions about how the ward will schedule its activities, we have written inside of our eyeglasses, “The family comes first.”

Elder Holland
I love—we all love—the line from Ecclesiastes, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We’ve only got so much time, but we all have the same amount. So I think if we work on priorities, we can make family first. I think we can do a better job.

Elder Holland
I introduced the word pattern in those brief remarks as we started. Some of these things that we almost take for granted should not be taken for granted, like family scripture study, like family prayer, like family home evening—we tend to dash those off as if they were understood by everybody, but those ought to become part of a family pattern.

Sister Tanner
One hopeful thing about patterns is that even though we sense our imperfections in trying to establish these patterns, it’s quite remarkable and fulfilling for us as we see our children then carry on those patterns, even though we didn’t feel like we were totally perfect at it.

Sister Beck
I was raised in a big family. My parents had a lot of children. And that means there were a lot of opinions and a lot of work to care for this family. But they used the tool of family home evening to really teach us. Every week we sang “Love at Home.” That was the opening hymn. And I remember as a teenager thinking it was really tiresome to sing that hymn every week.
Elder Oaks
Sometimes that hymn is sung through clenched teeth.
Elder Holland
And by assignment.
Sister Lant
Sometimes it’s the mother’s clenched teeth.
Sister Beck
It was more a belief than a practice. But every week, Dad would say, “Now we’ll sing our opening hymn, ‘Love at Home.’ ” And when I was about 14 or 15, in that age when you question everything, I asked my father, “Why do we have to sing this hymn every week? There are a lot of good hymns in the hymnbook we could sing.”
And he looked at me very sternly, and he said, “When you have learned lesson 1, I will teach you lesson 2.” And I don’t know what lesson 2 was; we didn’t ever get there, but I have to say that after the passage of many years, I look at my family, and we do love one another. We did, somehow, over the years, learn to love each other because that was lesson 1 my parents wanted to teach. They didn’t try to cover everything. They knew if they started with that, it would work. I had a wonderful young mother approach me. She had four children under the age of six, and she said, “We are being faithful in trying to have our family scripture study every morning, but it’s just a disaster. Somebody’s always crying; they don’t pay attention.” And I said, “How long are you trying to do this?” She said, “Well, we set a goal to do 10 minutes every day.” And I said, “Well, with the audience you have, you’re probably about 8 minutes too long.” She had the pattern down, and she needed to adapt a little bit to the age of her audience. Maybe start with a picture of Adam and Eve and talk about the picture and not try to help a two-year-old read the scriptures. But she was faithful, and I loved her for that.

Sister Lant
Elder Holland, I wanted to just say a word about judging other people. We look at other people, and things are not always as they seem. We think it’s one way, but it isn’t always that way.
We had a large family, and my husband was the bishop when all the children were still very young. I would work all day Saturday and all morning Sunday to get them to church, and I had to get them there early or we just didn’t even get there. We would line the whole bench—the whole center bench was filled with our children on the second row back—and we would be there before the meeting started.
I remember one day a sister came up behind me and leaned over and said, “Sister Lant, if my kids were as good as yours and if it was as easy for me as it is for you, I would have a large family too.”
Well, I started to cry, and I cried clear through the whole meeting. And my husband kept looking at me like “What is wrong? What is wrong?” I was a mess. I completely had a come-apart. And it was because it wasn’t easy.
We tend to judge one another. We judge harshly. Or we judge unfairly as we look at others—
Elder Holland
Unkindly.
Sister Lant
—unkindly. And we don’t really know what one another’s situations are. We just have to love each other.