Family

Talks

Quotes

You may not always have the ideal family, but you can always be the ideal family member. – Jean Benson

Eloise McBride shared the following story in Relief Society.  Her son and daughter were fighting.  She asked her daughter what happened and the little girl replied, “He hit me second, so I hit him first.”

Steven Covey has said, “I am convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Family Home Evening is the only time we open and close a fight with prayer.

“Declaring our testimony of the gospel is good, but being a living example of the restored gospel is better. Wishing to be more faithful to our covenants is good; actually being faithful to sacred covenants—including living a virtuous life, paying our tithes and offerings, keeping the Word of Wisdom and serving those in need—is much better. Announcing that we will dedicate more time for family prayer, scripture study, and wholesome family activities is good; but actually doing all these things steadily will bring heavenly blessings to our lives.” (“Of Regrets and Resolutions” by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf October 2012)

The time will come when only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us. – Spencer W. Kimball

Many voices from the world in which we live tell us we should live at a frantic pace.  There is always more to do and more to accomplish.  Yet deep inside each of us is a need to have a place of refuge where peace and serenity prevail, a place where we can reset, regroup, and reenergize to prepare for future pressures.  The ideal place for that peace is within the walls of our own homes, where we have done all we can to make the Lord Jesus Christ the centerpiece… One of the greatest blessings we can offer to the world is the power of a Christ-centered home where the Gospel is taught, covenants are kept, and love abounds.” (Elder Richard G. Scott, April 2013 Conference)

The Proclamation to the World on the Family is the blueprint to the plan of happiness.

Oftentimes young people view the commandments as burdensome and restrictive.  As adults, we teach them that that’s not true – that they actually help you and make life easier.  As adults, we sometimes view the basics of living the gospel as burdensome too – family home evening, family prayers, family scripture study, etc.  That’s not true either.  They actually help to make life easier.

Some years ago a fire erupted in the middle of the night and completely destroyed a family’s home.  A neighbor came by to console a seven-year-old, not knowing that he was about to be taught a great principle.  “Johnny, it’s sure too bad your home burned down.”  Johnny thought a moment and then said, “Oh, that’s where you’re mistaken, Mr. Brown.  That was not our home; that was just our house.  We still have our home, we just don’t have any place to put it right now.” – Gene R. Cook

Start where you are with what you have.

Some of the most important church meetings you will ever attend are your own family home evenings.

If you really want to find out what a person is like, divide an inheritance with them.

The home is the rock foundation, the cornerstone of civilization.  No nation will rise above its homes, and no nation will long endure when the family unit is weakened or destroyed.” Ezra Taft Benson

Every home has both a body and spirit.  You many have a beautiful house with all the decorations that modern art can give or wealth bestow.  You may have all the outward forms that will please the eye and yet not have a home.  It is not home without love.  It may be a hovel, a log hut, a tent, a wickiup, if you have the right spirit within, the true love of Christ, and love for one another, you have the true life of the home that Latter-Day Saints build and which they are striving to establish. – David O. McKay

Where is home?  Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness.  Home is where the heart’s tears can dry at their own pace – Vernon G. Baker

The family tree is the most important tree in the forest of life.

President Gordon B. Hinckley, quoting Orson F. Whitney: “The Prophet Joseph Smith declared – and he never taught more comforting doctrine – that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity.  Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold.   Either in this life or the life to come, they will return.  They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain.  Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith.  Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.” (General conference Addresses, April 1929) President Hinckley added “If any of you have a loved one in that condition, do not give up.  Pray for them and love them and reach out to them and help them.”

Of all my wife’s relations, I like myself the best.

If we want better people to make a better world, then we will have to begin where people are made – in the family.

We may truly say that the gospel plan originated in the council of an eternal family, it is implemented through our earthly families, and it has its destiny in our eternal families.  Small wonder the LDS church is known as a family-centered church. – Dallin H. Oaks

Family Home Evening – Opening song “Love at Home.”  Closing song “Master the Tempest is Raging”

Rearing children is the most important, the heaviest and the most overwhelming responsibility we’ll ever have in life.  The challenge is great, but I submit to you that if you do laugh and play more as a family, you will enjoy each other more, your job will be easier and more importantly, you will be much more successful. –  Jean Benson

We do live in a society that constantly pushes us.  We are told to play classical music to babies before they’re even born, told to teach them to read when they’re three.  We run them to this lesson and that.  It’s okay for kids to just be kids and parents to just be imperfect human beings and for all of us to just be happy and enjoy this business of living.

If there is contention in your home, you cannot receive answers through the spirit to tell you how to solve the contention in your home.

Not only were the stripling warriors’ mothers good teachers, the stripling warriors were teachable children. 

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them. – Christopher Morley

Barbara Bush to students at Wellesley College Commencement “As important as your obligation as a doctor, a lawyer or a business leader will be, you are a human being first, and those human connections with spouses, with children, with friends are the most important investments you will ever make.  At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more deal.  You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent.

 “Ask not what your mother can do for you – ask what you can do for your mother. (Lindsay Lohan’s home sign in People Magazine 2008) 

Two men were working.  One would dig a hole, one would fill it back in.  Someone stopped to question them. They replied, “There’s usually three of us – but the second guy who plants the tree couldn’t be here today.”  Do we stop often and ask ourselves why we do what we do?

I smile because you’re my sister – I laugh because there’s nothing you can do about it. 

Drew Barrymore in her book Wildflower.  Her dad was a “homeless old hippie.”  He and her mother had a tumultuous few years together and then separated before she was born.  He mother was a single mom living in Hollywood trying to make it as an actress.  Her life and childhood were unconventional and unstable, to say the least.  She starred in E.T. at the age of six and grew up on movie sets.  She became an emancipated adult at the age of fourteen and moved into her own apartment.  Here is a paragraph she wrote:

“My mother and father were both incapable of being parents, and I don’t fault them for it.  My therapist would disagree, but the truth is they gave me a great blueprint through their behavior of what not to do with my own kids.  For starters, I will have so many thousands of dinners with my kids.  They will sleep together and go to school and have a bedtime, and life will be so stable and consistent that they will complain until they grow up and realize that this is the better way!  A stable, loving family is something that should absolutely, fundamentally never ever be taken for granted!”

Alma 49:11 “But behold, Amalickiah did not come down himself to battle. And behold, his chief captains durst not attack the Nephites at the city of Ammonihah, for Moroni had altered the management of affairs.”  Moroni had fortified his cities so much that the enemy couldn’t attack.  Do you need to “alter the management of affairs” in your home? What could you do differently to protect your family?

“The story is told that the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi had a ritual he performed on the first day of training. He would hold up a football, show it to the athletes who had been playing the sport for many years, and say, “Gentlemen, … this is a football!” He talked about its size and shape, how it can be kicked, carried, or passed. He took the team out onto the empty field and said, “This is a football field.” He walked them around, describing the dimensions, the shape, the rules, and how the game is played.      

This coach knew that even these experienced players, and indeed the team, could become great only by mastering the fundamentals. They could spend their time practicing intricate trick plays, but until they mastered the fundamentals of the game, they would never become a championship team.”

I think most of us intuitively understand how important the fundamentals are. It is just that we sometimes get distracted by so many things that seem more enticing. (Deiter F. Uchtdorf “Of Things that Matter Most”, October 2010)

L. Tom Perry said, “Now, here are the blessings promised by a prophet of God for those who will hold weekly (family) home evenings; ‘If the Saints obey this counsel, we promise that great blessings will result.  Love at home and obedience to parents will increase.  Faith will be developed in the hearts of the youth of Israel, and they will gain power to combat the evil influences and temptations which beset them.” (Therefore I Was Taught,” Ensign May 1994, 38)

“Some parents may not understand that even when they feel secure in their own minds regarding matters of personal testimony, they can nevertheless make that faith too difficult for their children to detect.  We can be reasonably active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints, but if we do not live lives of gospel integrity and convey to our children powerful, heart-felt convictions regarding the truthfulness of the Restoration and the divine guidance of the church, then those children may, to our regret but not surprise, turn out not to be visibly active, meeting-going Latter-day Saints or sometimes anything close to it.

Moms and dads can do everything right and yet have children who stray.  Moral agency still obtains.  But even in such painful hours it will be comforting for you to know that your children knew of your abiding faith in Christ, in His true church, in the keys of the priesthood, and in those who hold them. Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can.  Keep the covenants your children know you have made and bear your testimony!” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “A Prayer for the Children,” April 2003 General Conference)

It is every bit as important to play and laugh together as families as it is to study, work and worship together. It’s during these times, when we are doing enjoyable things together, that we are building bridges – bridges of communication that we can cross time and time again to teach them the important things – the moral values, principles and ideals that we want instilled into their lives. Have you ever thought about the fact that it is very difficult to dislike someone that you’re having a really good time with?  Positive experiences together automatically bring families closer together. Families that play together, stay together. (Jean Benson)

Because our families are our life’s work, because the stakes are so high, it’s easy to panic when things aren’t going well.  Let me share one of my favorite anecdotes with you:

“There were two astronauts flying when their spacecraft began having significant problems.  Every light on the dashboard was blinking red.  Their initial reaction was to panic, to “do something.”  Instead, one turned to the other and calmly said, “Is this thing still flying?”  His copilot answered “yes.”  So they took a deep breath, and started addressing each blinking light one at a time.”  (Alan Bean)

I hope we can do the same with our families.  Although we each have deep concerns for our family members, don’t panic.  This is not a race.  Not only do we have a lifetime to build eternal families, we have 1,000 years of the millennium after that.  Focus on what you can control.  You may have family members who don’t want to cooperate – a husband who doesn’t want to “work on your marriage” or a child who refuses to come to family prayer.

Keep in mind that we will not be judged as families.  We will be judged as individuals.  The second article of faith states, “Men will be punished for their own sins” – not someone else’s. James E. Faust said, “Perfection is an eternal goal.  While we cannot be perfect in mortality, striving for it is a commandment which ultimately, through the Atonement, we can keep.   Heavenly Father’s plan insures that all His worthy children will be sealed together in families.” – Shannon Williams

It has been said that a mother is only as happy as her most unhappy child.  That is especially true with adult children.  As you make family a priority, not only will your children be happier, but you will be happier as well. – Shannon Williams