A View From the Font

Defining ‘Home’

Due to some organizational changes and opportunities I have recently relocated my family away from what has been ‘home’ for the past 6 years.

Six years is a good amount of time to get rooted in friends, schools, familiarities, etc.  My family is lucky (for lack of a better term) in the sense my kids are young and their roots aren’t that deep yet.  My oldest is 7 and has one year of school (minus kindergarten) under her belt.  My youngest can adapt to anything (I think/hope).  It was hard to decide to do this move on several levels, but mostly for us – mom and dad – leaving everything we know to be comfortable.

Moving sucks.

We’ve been in our new place for almost a month now and in the third week my daughter had a bit of a breakdown.  This wasn’t spawned by random emotion but rather from her mother telling her we probably weren’t going to have friends over today to play (as she has for the past 3 weeks daily) and that the house needed some cleaning attention.  My daughter was not happy about this and it spawned her to claim that this was the boringest day in the world and the meltdown started.  Apparently she started to get angry about not seeing her other friends and then perhaps realized the sense that she wouldn’t be seeing them regularly anymore.

The next day my daughter reminded me of her episode and told me: Daddy, I got homesick yesterday. Which was a good opportunity for me to have a brief but serious conversation with her.  I asked her what happened, what she missed and a few other questions.  Her bottom line was this: I miss our home.  I have to admit that I’ve been missing our friends as well a lot.  But her comment struck an emotion in me and I quickly responded with this:

Zoe, as long as you have mom, dad and your brother, you are home.  Home is wherever we are a family.  When we are together, we are home.

I’m not sure if she understood or not, but it really made me think if I believed myself even.  I’ve contemplated it a bit and I think I do. 

For me, as long as I have my family, I’m home.

Your family’s legacy on prayer

Today’s Elder Quorum lesson was on prayer (Elder Bednar’s October 2008 talk Pray Always).  As a convert, I quickly learned that a big part of the LDS Church was prayer.  Pray for every meal (we used to say ‘Grace’ before special dinners only while growing up), pray morning, night, blessings, ordinances, family prayer, individual prayer, pray after studying scriptures, spouse prayer, Temple prayer, etc.  You get the drift.  Being a convert who hadn’t prayed much, this was somewhat foreign to me…not in a bad way, just in one of those yet-to-be-established habit sort of ways.  When things aren’t a habit, they are harder to start.

As a introductory question to the lesson today, our instructor asked the room full of about 30 fathers the following question:

Who grew up in a home that had family prayer?

Now, our Elder’s Quorum is filled with a range of age groups.  My best guess is that there is enough range to represent 4 different generations.  Upon hearing this question – I knew my answer was no – I expected a different response than what I saw.  I knew how I looked at certain people in my Ward and pegged some as the Peter Priesthood types and assumed their extended family was too.  After some chuckling of Can you qualify the parameters of that question?  Every day? Individual or all family? etc., the room had no hands in the air.

I was taken back a bit.  I’m not sure what the next 5 minutes discussion was.  I only know my thoughts were: I’m not alone.  But those thoughts came with shock as well.  Here is 4 generations of families…surely someone grew up in a home that followed the guidance of the Lord?  It was comforting and alarming at the same time.  Alarming in that how could I, a lowly convert who struggles constantly with a lot of things, be successful in the simple ask of family prayer, when those Peter Priesthoods weren’t successful either?  Comforting in that I’m human.

I mentioned the word habit above.  Perhaps here lies the problem.  If prayer becomes a habit, does it follow the guidance from Elder Bednar?  Is it always?  Sure if it is your habit.  Is it with sincere gratitude?  Hmm, for the routine things?  Do you pray for others?  Wow, beyond my family you mean?  Maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong the whole time.  If I’m trying to form a habit, I surely will succeed in forming one, but fail in the desired outcome of why I’m forming the habit.  I do want to have family prayer.  Despite my struggles religiously, I do want my children to establish their own thoughts on prayer and I want them to see that I have faith in that belief.

This small exercise today had me think the rest of the afternoon about my legacy on my family.  So I challenge you as well.

What is your family’s legacy on prayer?

I hope that my thoughts turn to sincere actions and a change of heart from habit to desire.

A humble reminder

A month ago I wrote about three words that simply made my day.  Today, after 2 pretty long days with my kids while the wife was out with friends, I had lost a lot of patience.  My daughter fell asleep in our bedroom as she does sometimes, and I was preparing to bring her into her room.  I usually go into her room first and get it all ready so that I can quietly just pick her up from ours and put her in her bed.

Tonight as I did this routine, I pulled the sheets back and discovered something poking out beneath her pillow.  This is what I pulled out:

This was unsolicited.  Something she probably was drawing today while keeping herself busy.  A HUGE smile came across my face and my eyes teared up.  I am so humbled to have been rewarded in my life with such a wonderful spirit in my daughter and son.

I love my family too, Zoe.

‘I love you dad’

Last Saturday, despite being the day of our annual holiday Festivus party, it started as a pretty rough day.  People disagreeing, arguments ensue, etc.  Hey, these things happen.  Hopefully we all have it within us to try to temper our emotions (some of us better than others—and I’m NOT speaking of myself).  That Saturday wasn’t one of those moments.  Before our party, my kids were going to be picked up to stay at Grandma’s for the night so that we could party ‘til the wee hours of the morning (yeah right).

As my stress level was at the highest and my emotions boiling over, my daughter stops on her dash to the car picking her up, turns around and drops her backpack and runs back.  She ran up to me gave me a great big hug and simply said ‘I love you dad.’

My heart had never been so full as it did in that moment.  I didn’t let her go.  And she didn’t mind that either which made the moment even more precious to me.  It was the absolute best moment I’ve ever experienced as a parent so far.  The moment felt like hours but I’m sure it was only a few seconds.  My eyes were definitely watery (I’m an emotional sap anyway) and all I remember is whispering to her “thanks Zoe, I really needed that.”  I let her go and she was off.  She probably has no idea how important that moment was for me and for our relationship as father-daughter.  I’ve written it in my journal and hopefully one day she can appreciate it.

It reminded me of the awesome responsibility of parenthood.  And not ‘awesome’ as in the ‘far our cool’ sense, but the weight of us as parents.  I think that every decision in my life now has a third pivot of analysis – how does it affect my children.  This is as simple as going out to dinner with friends to job changes that might affect moving, etc.  We, as parents, don’t decide for ourselves anymore, but rather decide for those we preside over in our family.  How can I think it is okay to decide about a great job opportunity if it involves taking my children away from an environment that they love so much?  Sure, they are young and it is likely they can make new friends, adapt to new schools, etc. – but to simply discount those as trivial seems irresponsible.  I haven’t yet had to hit these types of walls yet, but I know that I eventually will.

I’m comforted though that my experience in my faith helps me through these times as a parent and helps guide me to what is right in life.  I’m hopeful that as time passes that I can continue to be strong with my children and teach them what I believe and why…to help them discern for themselves the spirit that they feel when thinking about such matters of faith.  I guess that only time will tell.

But thank you Zoe for that moment…and I love you too – more than you can even imagine.

Church in Politics and Fighting for Family

Since becoming a member one of the things I get confused about from time to time is the authoritative direction given by the First Presidency.  I have often felt that there has been times where they don’t want to get their fingers dirty, and then there are issues where they get deeply involved in controversy and politics.  I remember one such moment in my research in becoming a member around the salamander letters (later admitted by Hinckley I believe as a moment of the Church’s history they could have done better in public politics/opinion).  I’ve been a member now through almost 3 presidential election time periods and can distinctly remember (and I’m sure it will happen again) letters being read to the congregation from the Office of the First Presidency regarding politics (also known as ‘political neutrality’).  In fact it is an item in the Newsroom:

The Church does not:

• Endorse, promote or oppose political parties, candidates or platforms.

You may remember this too, as in fact it does generally only get read around elections of candidates rather than periods of topic-related issues.  Because of this, I’ve often thought that the Church remains neutral to the land law all the time.  Maybe I’m a sleeper, but I’ve not recalled a moment in my history with the Church where they’ve been so politically involved before…or even at all.  These letters are etched in my memory of the opposite in fact.  In 1995, the Proclamation to the World was issued by the Church and presumably should have put to rest the thoughts on family for the Church.  It is a wonderful message and one I am proud that our faith has so widely declared.  I’ve recently told my wife that I really think it should be hanging proudly in our home.  I can’t think of a better discussion piece than a document/message that stresses our belief in the family unit than the Proclamation.

Fast-forward 13 years.

Actually you don’t have to fast fowrard that far.  This same issue arose in California in May 1999 where declarations were made as well.  The issue of same-sex marriage still exists.  There are arguments on all partisan lines about it.  Yesterday (13 AUG 2008), the Church issued a note on The Divine Institution of Marriage.  Personally I wish the word ‘institution’ wouldn’t be used…it has such a connotation about it that is counter to the word ‘family’ to me.  The message is in direct response to constitutional changes proposals in various states to ensure that marriage be defined as between a man and a woman.  The message, outlines the defense of this message to readers in various areas and not just one singular view from faith.  The message also talks about the difference from tolerance versus belief and that we should continue to be Christ-like to our friends and neighbors and exhibit ‘love thy neighbor’ traits.  Being tolerant doesn’t mean that you have to be accepting of the same belief.  it’s a struggle on both sides…those that will look at this message and chastise the Church will not be tolerant of our views either…double-edged sword.

But back to my point…such a strong, vocal stance on not only the issue, but a directive toward local political voting.  It made me wonder what was going on here?  I thought the Church stayed out of politics.  Reading back to the political neutrality we can read that the Church does:

Reserve the right as an institution to address, in a nonpartisan way, issues that it believes have significant community or moral consequences or that directly affect the interests of the Church.

And therein lies the involvement…moral issues.  It still is odd to me as that one could argue one candidate’s platform strikes at the moral issues of our society as well.  The struggle I have is that perception=reality.  You can put any asterisk on a policy you want, but when you stay so neutral for most issues and then lurch out with a wide campaign encouraging your members to actively get involved, vote for the amendment, etc. it sends a weird message of a double-standard and confusion to those already looking for a way to probe our faith.

Please don’t misunderstand me here.  I am for the family.  I’m just confused to our own organization’s policies and involvements.  I’ve been told that this has happened in the past though during debates on public education and other interesting times in our nation’s history.  So maybe this is just new to me as a convert, which is fine…I’ll have to get used to it.  It will be interesting to me to watch this get played out in the political and public forums.  Regardless I still stand by my personal beliefs and think the Proclamation is an inspired message and this new message on marriage helps explain it deeper and put things in our faith’s perspective more.

But part of me can’t help but think that we’re acting a little like Sweden here – sit back a lot until the shores are attacked, then bring out the nukes.  Maybe a more balanced, continued involvement with politicians would help things in the long run?