family

Lately I've been really grateful for my family. Maybe it's that we just celebrated our anniversary (2 years!) and then Luke's birthday yesterday (31!), but I'm just really happy to have my own family. Not to mention my other families ... my wonderful sister and hers, my parents and little brothers, AND my in-laws, who are all incredible.








I've been getting really irritated lately at work when I see pregnant 16 year old girls determined to keep their babies with no idea how to be a mom, let alone a responsible adult. Or drug addicts with several children that have been taken away by DCFS ... pregnant again and using and drinking throughout the pregnancy. This is hardest part of trying (unsuccessfully) to have kids for me. I knew it would be hard for us to get pregnant, I knew it would take a while ... so I'm not stressing about it. But I do feel so sad for all these babies born into crappy situations without dads or with health problems resulting from drug/alcohol use. It makes me want to cry. I could be a really good mom to those babies.

The point: I read this awesome article in the June Ensign. It's by Elder Bruce D Porter of the Seventy, you can read it here. It's kind of long, but totally worth it. My favorite part, from James Lincoln Collier:

“We have abandoned our children. Between a soaring divorce rate and an equally soaring rate of children born to unwed mothers, it is now the case that the majority of our children will spend at least a portion of their childhoods in single parent homes—in effect being raised without fathers. A large minority will spend their entire childhoods essentially without fathers, and a considerable number will not even know who their fathers are.

“This is an extremely unusual circumstance—perhaps unique in human experience. In no known human society, past or present, have children generally been raised outside of an intact nuclear family. The nuclear family is one of the most basic of all human institutions, a system of doing things so fundamental that until this century it occurred to very few people that life could exist without it.”

I love that last part. The family is so fundamental that until this century it occurred to very few people that life could exist without it. So weird. And this part I love also ... kind of a challenge:

"The Church is a small institution compared with the world at large. Nevertheless, the Latter-day Saints as a people should not underestimate the power of our example, nor our capacity to persuade public opinion, reverse negative trends, or invite seeking souls to enter the gate and walk the Lord’s chosen way. We ought to give our best efforts, in cooperation with like-minded persons and institutions, to defend the family and raise a voice of warning and of invitation to the world. The Lord expects us to do this, and in doing so to ignore the mocking and scorn of those in the great and spacious building, where is housed the pride of the world."

That's all. And read this also. It's the perfect example of how I want to raise my daughters.