Family has also been on my mind a lot this week because Kendall's sweet grandpa passed away this Monday and I have just been thinking a lot about how eternal families are really so essential to our lives. Kendall's grandparents raised eight children in the gospel and all are active and have amazing families. That truly is an example to me because that is how Kendall and I want to raise our families and I think his grandparents did it all because of the faith in the gospel.
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| Kendall's sweet Grandma & Grandpa at our wedding this past August. |
The family is very important and essential to the LDS faith. We had families in the preexistence and were born into a family on this earth. If you think about, every person on this earth is born into a family because it takes a mother and a father to bare a child and having those elements constitutes a family. I think it is so important to remember the vital parts of the family because they are getting questioned each day in our society.
So lets take a little journey through why the family is important. We believe in the preexistence and that everyone had a choice in the plan of happiness to come to this earth and all had families before we were born. Then there was the creation, where God made the earth and all the inhabitants on it. After the creation comes the Fall of Adam and Eve, where they partook of the forbidden fruit and were cast out of the Garden of Eden. If they had not been cast out then we would not have had agency to choose good from evil and the Atonement of Jesus Christ, where he suffered for ALL of our sins, would not be necessary.
With all of these events we were able to have and create families. Within our families is where our principles are built. Think back to when you were a child, where did you learn to tie your shoes, ride a bike, say your first words. That was all done through your parents and your family. This is also where we learn about the importance of family prayer, scripture study and family home evening.
All things essential to the well being of our lives are taught by our loving fathers and mothers. They have worked very hard to raise us to be the best we can be. It is also very important that they lead by example, we learn the importance of marriage, unity and love through the lives of our parents.
In a talk by Julie B. Beck she says, "Live in your home so that you’re brilliant in the basics, so that you’re intentional about your roles and responsibilities in the family. Think in terms of precision not perfection. If you have your goals and you are precise in how you go about them in your homes, youth will learn from you. They will learn that you pray, study the scriptures together, have family home evening, make a priority of mealtimes, and speak respectfully of your marriage partner. Then from your example the rising generation will gain great hope." (March 2011).
I absolutely love this quote because to me that puts this whole concept of the family in a nut shell. The learning and loving that happens in the family is essential to each of our well-beings. A man in my group in my Family class said that he really does not see any other purpose of being on this earth besides the family. I really can relate to that because we were born into this world through a family so Heavenly Father was teaching us from the very beginning that we are to always focus on the family.
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| Kendall's Family |
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| My Family |
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| My new family :) |
