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.

Our daughter turns 8 this year and was reluctant to go to this program.  I think she thought we were going to drop her off or something.  To be honest, I was reluctant to go as well because I had to put a suit on…sigh…I hate suits.  The program was about preparing for the actual day of baptism (i.e., get your crap in order) as well as what it means for girls (activity days) and boys (scouts).  I think our daughter half paid attention.

As I was listening to this though and seeing the baptismal day in my head, it dawned on me, that she’ll be the second Heuer in the Church for my family.  This is my spiritual legacy beginning.  I felt odd and pressured a bit.  I’m not weirdly emotional about it, but perhaps when the day comes I’ll find it more inspirational.  I’m looking forward to it and trying to be a good example to my daughter so that she can start paying attention better to the foundations of the Church and the gospel.

Weird though.  1995 I was baptized.  2010 will bring another in my tree into the gospel.

The more I think about journaling, the more I’m curious.  The concept of a diary to me has always been one of secrecy.  Heck, the fact that most diaries are sold with little locks tells me so, right?  I never kept one, but I’d always imagined those who did never intended for them to serve as lexicons for their life.  I always imagined they were the most personal of thoughts, written down as perhaps part of some therapeutic expression. 

As I started journaling (I suck at it mind you) I was writing in the concept that I’d imagine I *was* writing a lexicon of my life for future generations.  After all, in the Church we always hear about people reading from journals in talks, referring to historical moments, etc.  But have you ever heard someone read a journal entry that contained a deep secret of their life, or perhaps thoughts about their best friends that they never expressed (that were negative)?  I haven’t.  But why not?  If we write in journals with the knowledge that they may be read by future generations, wouldn’t we hear some of these things?  Surely even the Prophet had bad days and made note of them…angry with parents or friends, or girlfriends he thought was stinky? :-)

For me more lately my written journal has, in fact, been a therapeutic expression of things that have gotten me down.  Reflecting on it recently it reads as a book of sad and angry thoughts, writing when I’m bummed out about life, work, or other crap that frustrates me.  What causes me to be inspired to write the bad times, but not the good?  And what of these sad/bad thoughts?  Do I want my adult children/grand-children of the future to read them?  If not, what then is their purpose?  If you go through troubling times in your life whether they be personal, with other family/friends, etc. – and you journal them – are they things you’d want your future generations to read?  What would/could the future impact be on thoughts of you?  on thoughts of those you wrote about?

What about you?  Do you journal for purely yourself or for future generations?  And do you hold back those most personal, emotional moments in fear of future interpretation?

If your spouse wrote a journal of you you treat them…what would it say?

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.

Great idea guys and can’t wait to see what others you’ll have coming.  My suggestion would be to enable some RSS feed so that I can be notified of when new videos are posted (hint, hint).

It was an interesting piece, but even interesting is that despite the interview they (ABC) did, where the Apostles mentioned that the FLDS groups are not a part of our belief, the news agency still included the Texas compound situation in the same sentences.  I suppose titilating headlines/intros still prevail over truth.

As a convert though it is great to see more open discussions about the faith.  We should not hide from our beliefs (nor should anyone) but be proud of them and declare the truths which we know.

Video and story: Mormons Open Doors to Discuss Religion.

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.

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.

Tonight I called upon my Bishop for some guidance.  He came over promptly and sat down to talk.  Here I was, talking with what could have been the guy I went golfing with earlier that day.  It was odd for a moment as I’ve only known my Bishops to be “older” (no offense) than me.  Bishop Williams isn’t much (if at all?).  I started to blabber as he listened and nodded about things I was saying.  I figured he’d just listen.

Then it happened.

As he spoke, I could see this wasn’t “Duane” anymore.  He was transformed and provided such amazing abilities to understand, explain, comfort.  We spent the next 2 hours or so talking.  He shared stories from GA’s from memory, he popped open scripture and pointed to perfect passages without hesitation.  He understood me.  I’ve not been that impressed in a while.  I don’t know what happens when you are called as Bishop…if you suddenly get a crash course in Zig Ziglar training, or are given some type of injection of knowledge, but whatever it is, it’s a blessing to them and to those they serve.  I can only imagine it is within some deep prayers and meditation that they receive whatever abilities they need to perform their duties with peace and a calming effect on themselves and those they serve.  It’s as if words seemingly flow with ease and without a stupor of thought.

Bishop Williams, a peer, counseled me today and I listened.  Bishop, you are indeed a man of God.