Family is the Answer

 Last week I read a book about the terror threats we face at home and abroad, it was enlightening and terrifying at the same time.  That night I went to bed a little frightened and concerned wondering "What is the answer, how do we fight this irrational foe, what do we do, how can we protect ourselves?" I wrestled with this through the night and then the answer came to me, so simple, so quiet but as clear as the sun at noonday.

Family.

Family. That is it.
The decline of the family is the cause of the threat, what makes us vulnerable to it and the strength of the family is what will defeat it.

I am going to spend some time pondering these things and trying to explain what I mean.  I hope to make this a regular feature.

Today, I would like to touch on how is not very astonishing it is that something so very routine as Family can be the answer.

As Latter-day Saints and particularly as Latter-day Saint women we have been told from the time we were in Nursery about the importance of Family.

President Harold B. Lee said "The most important...work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own homes.”

President David O. McKay proclaimed "No other success can compensate for failure in the home”

We have all heard these quotations a million times and many of us have had them stitched, painted, engraved, printed and vinyl-ed on the walls of our homes.

It conjures up warm feelings about motherhood, raising righteous children, wiping snotty noses with a smile and figuring out how to make do with little for the privilege of not working outside the home. Most of all it reminds us not to neglect our families in the pursuit of other more worldly gains.

But I think this sentiment means more than we as LDS initially took it to mean.  Now, as I look at the state of the world, the country and the family I think it means more.  It always meant more but we too far away from the peril to be able to see it yet.

The prophets have been preparing us for decades.  The Church first instituted the Family Home Evening program in 1915, nearly a century ago!

Recently, the family has been more prominent in the focus of church teachings.  I have said this before but in 1995 when the First Presidency issued The Family: A Proclamation to the World it seemed to me a bit superfluous.  "Of course family is important, of course parents have a responsibility to their children, of course fathers and marriage, of course fathers and mothers, of course equal partners."

16 years later I think it was such a prophetic statement that I am in awe.

By the time the Relief Society Declaration was issued in 1999 including "Dedicate ourselves to strengthening marriages, families and homes." and
"Strengthen home and family" was added to the Young Women Theme (in 2002?) the need for such statements was becoming apparent.

I am so grateful that I have known and was taught from an early age that Family was important.  I hope that that foundation will aid me as I attempt to discover how the simple word "family" will help save the world.

At first I thought that the simple answer of "Family" was surprising because it was so simple.  Now I see that it shouldn't be surprising at all.  We have been told.

There is a lovely new site, Sunday Society  dedicated to "the best of LDS women's history" I am pleased to be participating this week and hopefully every week in the Sunday Blog Hop.

P.S. I am so lucky to have such fun pictures of my family!