“Successful
marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of… work.”
Today we see how parents are so eager to find success in
their work and careers outside the home, but neglect the work they need to be
doing in the home. Have so many people forgotten that the most important work we will ever do will be within the
walls of our own home? (Harold B. Lee) The Family: A Proclamation to the
World says that providing for the physical needs of children is a “sacred duty”
and that work is one of the important principles upon which “successful
marriages and families are established and maintained”. Caring for a spouse and
children is a “solemn responsibility”. The greatest
joy we will experience in life will come from our families, but to get that
joy, we need to be working to strengthen our families.
Work brings a family closer
together. It bonds family members as they experience and learn together in a
good environment. “Ordinary household work that is often considered a
waste of time can be a time of closeness and fun that strengthens family bonds
and develops Christlike virtues…Family work provides endless opportunities to
recognize and fill others’ needs. It thus teaches us to love and serve one
another, inviting us to be like Jesus Christ” (Alan J. Hawkins, 2012).
I
have four sisters in my family and we always had to work together in our home
as we were given tasks to complete. From raking leaves in our yard to building
a swing set for a family in need, my sisters and I learned how to cooperate and
work as a team. Those shared experiences definitely strengthened our
relationships and in those moments our love for each other grew. “When family members work together in the right
spirit, a foundation of caring and commitment grows out of their shared
experience” (Alan J. Hawkins, 2012). Working has helped me build
relationships, not just with my family members, but with those around me as I
have worked and served beside them. It has taught me the value of service and
has helped me realize that I find the most joy in life when I’m serving others.
Growing up with responsibilities has helped me learn forgiveness, love,
compassion, unity, teamwork, compromise, and patience. “Family work provides
endless opportunities to recognize and fill others’ needs. It thus teaches us
to love and serve one another, inviting us to be like Jesus Christ” (Alan J.
Hawkins, 2012).
Elder Neal A. Maxwell observed, “The divine attributes of
love, mercy, patience, submissiveness, meekness, purity…cannot be developed in
the abstract. These require the clinical experiences… Nor can these attributes
be developed in a hurry”. My husband shares how he developed these divine
attributes through his family experience:
My mother became terminally ill with a rare disease
while I was about 12 years old. By the
age of 16, it was bad enough that we moved to a new place so that we could accommodate
my mother’s illness. A year after that my mother’s health became so bad that
she required constant help, in doing all things. As a 17 year old in high school, I was
helping my mother go to the bathroom, brushing her teeth, giving sponge baths,
and carrying her everywhere we went. By
the end of her life, about 3 months after I was 17, she became so sick that she
couldn’t move at all. Her disease had run the full course and she had paralysis
of her entire body. She could only moan
to speak, and her eyes were the main source of conversation. The moan would get our attention and then she
would look at what she needed. During
this time of my life, I found out what love was. As I served her every need, I felt the love
of service building deep into my roots.
My mother spent much of my early life teaching me to do many
things. She taught me math and science, how
to read, and to choose right from wrong. At the end she taught me more about life then
she will ever know. I learned to tell
the difference between wants and needs, I learned to love and serve, and I
learned how important the family really is as we all sustained one
another. My mother’s parting gift was to
tie my family together and help us understand the concept of our eternal
family.
Through my husband’s
experience, although difficult to go through, his character was strengthened by
developing the divine attributes Elder Maxwell talked about: Love, patience,
mercy, submissiveness, meekness, and purity. Family work truly shapes us toward
divinity.
I believe that work can be
rewarding and build family relationships. My parents were big believers of
this. They definitely taught me the value of work. It’s true that we are always teaching by example. Our kids are always
watching and will learn from our behavior and attitude. I think
it’s important to know the value of hard work even as a child. In this life we
are actively working toward becoming the person we want to be, so work is an
important principle to learn. I like the word
proactive. I find it interesting that when you look up this word in the
dictionary it says it means to be in control of a situation or occurrence. When
we are active in our lives—active in the gospel, in our families, church,
community, work, etc… we are in control. When we let go and lose ourselves, we
allow Satan to gain control over us and soon we find that we are following him
and falling away from God. I feel bad for those who don’t learn of the value of
work in their early years because it’s a major wake-up call later in life when
they see how much work they actually need to do to achieve anything.
We always need to be active in
our life because when we are working, we are learning, experiencing, and
growing our character. When you know the value of hard work, you appreciate so
much more in life. You know how to work for something you want and then find
the joys in the accomplishment from those things. Little actions and pieces of
work may not look important close up, but as one stands back and looks at their
works as a whole, they can see the picture they’ve created of who they are and
how they’ve chosen to live their life. Our works define us.
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Growing up, I have many
memories of my mother teaching my sisters and I how to cook. We would work
together to make dinner, set the table, and gather the family to enjoy a meal as
a family each night. I have adopted my mother’s love for cooking and look
forward to the time that I can teach my children how to cook. When my
grandmother passed away I inherited her recipes, many of which were her
mothers. I decided to make a recipe book of my own and add all her recipes into
it so I can give it to my daughter someday.
*This post is all in reference to Chapter 21 of Successful Marriages and Families: Proclamation Principles and Research Perspectives, by Alan J. Hawkins, David C. Dollahite, and Thomas W. Draper (2012).
*This post is all in reference to Chapter 21 of Successful Marriages and Families: Proclamation Principles and Research Perspectives, by Alan J. Hawkins, David C. Dollahite, and Thomas W. Draper (2012).
Additional Resources:
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