As many of you know, I’m an outspoken Mormon. I don’t judge anyone here. I mean, how could I look at the motes in your eyes, when I’ve got a beam in mine? Anyway, I thought I’d share something special to my family. There’s a document that was published by the prophet of our church back in 1995 about how important the family is to God. There’s a specific segment I wanted to talk about in it. See the quote below:
“Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”
I’d like to discuss how these principles have helped to strengthen family ties for each of us. Or if your family is a complete disaster, how have the lack of applying these principles affected you? How would you like to implement them in the future?
I’ll start. My family has always had strong faith, which has given us guiding principles to return to even if we strayed. I believe that one thing that has solidified our family and linked us together is Traditions. I dont just mean celebrating a holiday.
Like, we have a tradition of writing in a journal as a family at the end of every year. We do a family cheer at night before bed. We have a “King of the Day”, where one of the boys gets to choose what to do and gets a special snuggle time at the end of the day with Mom and Dad alone. We have a family reunion that happens every other summer. I believe that children who have things that they can own in their family, (not material things, but ideas and feelings and experiences) will find that if they fall on difficult times, their family will always be a safe haven.
What do you think? What traditions do you guys have in your families that make your family special? What traditions would you like to start?
My family is not quite religious, but we have become spiritual, many thanks to AA for that.
2 of my kids stay with an LDS family and I can see they’ve grown quite a bit, my baby girl will regularly pray with me or lead a prayer of thankfulness and gratitude.
Yesterday it just donned on me and I had us all say 1 nice thing that we think about ourselves. A couple of my kids had a difficult time but did come up with something. Then I suggested we say something nice about someone else in our family. It was very rewarding hearing my kids promote each others traits and virtues. I feel like it brought us all together just a little bit more.
There are many outside influences in the world, and many of them are not in good places or their job is to get you to feel like something is missing in your life. It’s good to know that you are perfect the way you are, and that you can feel good about yourself.
Not sure of this is what you meant but I enjoyed it yesterday and I would like to make it a habit.
That’s awesome and I am totally going to steal it! Kids need to feel a sense of belonging. They need to dig in roots and feel secure.
My two sisters were the black sheep of the family. They both had all these values instilled in them from an early age, but they still went crazy. The oldest left our home at 17 and was constantly using. She did heroin and speed, etc. My mom said that she was afraid that one night, she would come home and shoot them in their sleep. My other sister got expelled from school because she was in a gang and got in a fight.
Both of them turned around and returned to their roots though. I’m not saying that this will happen for everyone, but I think it will make it much easier should the worst happen.
That’s cool that your girls are staying with an LDS family. Are they going to Activity Days and things like that?
I’m not totally sure what all they attend but they speak highly of it. I know they did spend much of Sunday at and around the church.
My favorite part of an LDS church is that they all have a basketball court in them lol. I think wholesome activity/exercise is a great way to bring people together.
It’s called the Cultural Hall. It just happens to be a basketball court. Many of our meeting houses have them. There is often a stage connected to the gym as well. Most of the church buildings have a kitchen as well. We are very focused on recreation and arts. Lots of regions have big productions every year similar to a warehouse theater kind of thing.
Haha! Yeah, we can have caffeine. If you want to read about our law of health, there’s a link at the bottom. Really it is a directive to care for our bodies and treat them as temples as the New Testament says. We shouldn’t put harmful substances in our bodies, and we should consume good foods. In addition, we are counselled to not mark our bodies with tattoos or excessive piercings.
It’s really just a law of obedience and respect for the housing of our spirits that God has given us.
Lol. No, the hot drinks is defined as coffee and tea. We can drink hot cocoa and eat soup . That’s just what the letter of the law is though. If you’re following the spirit of the law, it may extend to other things. The spirit of the law may say, use all things in moderation. Sugar, caffeine, greasy/fatty foods, processed foods… etc.
Caffeine is not the point. The Word of Wisdom is a law of obedience first and foremost, then a law of health. The Children of Israel were commanded to not partake of “unclean” foods. Those foods weren’t really unclean necessarily, it just set them apart and taught them to obey.
The Word of Wisdom is the same, in that it separates us from the world and teaches us to obey. I’m sure that if I were to live the commandment to its fullest degree, it would include caffeine, processed food, high glycemic food, high fat food, other stuff that’s unhealthy. There are so many ways I could improve my health.
I think that there’s a lot of life left to live and time to communicate with people who are in your life. For Colleen and Chalmer, you have the opportunity to create the home you want them to remember. It doesn’t matter where you live, but how you live. Create for them a home of love, full of amazing memories that will last a lifetime.
My family is by no means religious. But we love our family traditions! Bedtime books every night. Dinner at the table where we all share about our day. We have a whiteboard where we leave silly messages to each other. DAILY
Others are we celebrate Zach’s happy heart day (July 1st for his life saving open heart surgery) he takes the duck stuffed animal blanket they have him as a baby to all his Dr. Appointments and lends it to others in the family when they are feeling sick.
I got to keep Dr. Ducky for the 2 weeks I had to wear a heart monitor.
Since we are not religious we pick a different culture to celebrate in December every other year. And ever other year we take a family vacation instead. In addition after Thanksgiving we clean out all our gently used clothes and toys and donate them.
We celebrate our black cat who was born on Halloween every year by watching Hokus Pokus. Her name is obviously binx.
I remembered another tradition that we do. It’s an LDS thing that families do every week called Family Home Evening. We sit together as a family once a week have a short moral/gospel lesson, sing and pray together, make a dessert, and have an activity. The boys have their favorites. Last week we played Kids Charades. They also like Hide and Seek, Duck, Duck, Goose, and some other board games.
. That’s just what the letter of the law is though. If you’re following the spirit of the law, it may extend to other things. The spirit of the law may say, use all things in moderation. Sugar, caffeine, greasy/fatty foods, processed foods… etc.
