by David E Bay, High Councilor
25 May 2022

Our daughter, Mindy, invited my wife, Coleen, and I to a family gathering this last week. Getting together with family can be soul satisfying or it can be very difficult.

Whether our family situation is positive or negative, the Family Proclamation teaches, “Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live.” Often the reason we as parents keep striving to work with our children is because we love our family, or at least feel that we ought to love our family in spite of all the messiness of our individual family situations.

Coleen and I met after we were both divorced and we each had custody of our children. She had six children, eight-years old to nineteen-years old, and I had three children, two-years old to seven-years old, when we got married.

To start with, mixing the two families was like mixing oil and water. Coleen and I wanted each family member to love all of the other family members, but it did not happen comfortably or easily at first (and even now decades later, there are times with lots of struggle). It seemed to us as if we were trying to push water uphill. Our vision of our own personal Brady Bunch was not a realistic picture of what our children were experiencing. Thirty-four years later, we are still working at the process of becoming a forever family.

This year, as we have studied the Old Testament patriarchs and their families, we realized that these great faithful families had problems. Struggles they faced included murder in the family (Genesis 4), offering a son as a sacrifice to idol gods (Abraham 1), selling a birthright for a bowl of soup(Genesis 25), and selling a brother into slavery (Genesis 37). And you thought your family had issues.

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught, “Whatever problems your family is facing, whatever you must do to solve them, the beginning and the end of the solution is charity, the pure love of Christ. Without this love, even seemingly perfect families struggle. With it, even families with great challenges succeed.”

The reason we want to be self-reliant is to bless our families and feel peace. We all have different situations with our families. There is NOT an ideal family. We all have our warts and areas of dysfunction. We all need to put forth an effort to help the next generation be better nurtured than the previous generation, yet we need to realize that difficult times are also learning opportunities. My wife told me once, that every trial we go through, is preparing us for something in our future. Some trials make me wonder, what is this preparing me for? Yet if we endure it with patience and long-suffering and allow the Lord to work His miracles in our life, we will grow from these experiences. This is how we learn to become like our Savior, who endured all things.

Now that our children are all grown and raising their own families, our new test is to allow them to have their “learning” experiences. A few years ago, there was a great quote in an Ensign article that I printed, framed, and hung in a prominent place in our kitchen. The quote is actually a mis-quote of Joseph Smith’s. “We teach them correct principles because whether we like it or not, they will govern themselves.” Joseph Smith/Lynn G. Robbins

Mindy asked her father-in-law what his philosophy about raising children was. He had seven children—all incredible by our daughter’s estimation. He said something that seemed profound to her at the time. He said, “The world is a cruel and difficult place to live in, but home shouldn’t be that way. It should be a place of kindness, respect, safety, and love.” He said, “I always tried to make our home a happy place.” She asked, “Surely your children fought or had disagreements. What did you do to stop that?” He answered, “I got the family photo albums out and the kids were so interested in seeing them, that they gathered around the couch and the fighting stopped.”

My own parents raised seven of us, and we couldn’t be more different from each other. Two of the seven have left the Church, yet there is a huge amount of love and respect for one another, and we maintain a close relationship. Mindy asked my mom, “What advice do you have about raising a family?” Her answer was, “You can never love too much.” She always had something kind to say about everyone.

As we gathered at Mindy’s house, I realized that even though we still have great struggles within our family, we also have occasional moments where we have glimpses of what families can be like in the eternities. It is imperative that we learn to show love to each of our family members in ways that they can begin to recognize that our love and faithfulness are stronger than the cords of death. None of us are perfect, but love endureth all things.