God Gave us Families

I love the song A Family is of God that we are learning in Primary this year. If you haven't heard it, click on the link and listen to it. I especially love the chorus:

God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be.
This is how He shares His love; for the family is of God.

I sing it often; to myself and to the girls. I find it tempers me in frustrating moments. It takes my thoughts to a higher plain and helps me have a different perspective. Then I find myself praying that Heavenly Father will take those uncomfortable and sometimes difficult situations (which seem so often with Tessa) and form me into what He wants me to become.

I haven't always been this way. I haven't always been so willing to let myself be formed into something not of my own choosing. I haven't always been willing to meet the demands of young children or to give my entire self to the service a large family demands. Let me explain.

It started as a teenager. (I recently read my journal from the summer I was 15 and almost couldn't believe it was me who wrote it.) I resented that I had to live in a large family and that so much of the family care was dropped at my feet at age 15. My mom and my older sister had to work that summer leaving me to care for my 5 younger siblings along with much of the housework and cooking. I promised myself that I would get an education and I would not live the life I was living then (cooking and cleaning and caring for children). And heaven forbid would I ever have more than 2 kids! I resisted learning to sew and can and garden because I would never need those skills. At one point in my journal I even wrote that I thought it would be boring to be just a mom. After I finished college, I landed a job and didn't ever really plan on staying home. I had Cache at that time and thought one child was just perfect.

Whoa! Now look at me. I have 5 kids (!), stay home, cook, clean, garden, sew . . I'm exactly what I said I would never be!! What's more, I'm perfectly content! Heavenly Father has molded me into what He wanted me to become even though I severely resisted. He knew that this life of nurturing and serving would bless my life more than I could ever know. In Preach My Gospel (p 48) it says "God's whole purpose--His work and His glory--is to enable each of us to enjoy all His blessings." (my italics) I haven't always been able to enjoy all of these blessings because I wasn't ready or willing. Slowly I have become more able to enjoy what I enjoy now (even so, enjoying it is often a conscious choice).I know I've posted this picture before, but it just seems so appropriate here. I love it because I adore the people in it but also because I look so content; so satisfied to be doing what I'm doing; so satisfied with this large family; so satisfied the way Heavenly Father has directed me even though it is not what I had dreamed for myself.

Heavenly Father, thankfully, is all knowing and caters our family situations to provide us with opportunities that have the ability to shape us to become what we need to be--whatever that is. The things I learned as a single mom could not have come for me in any other way. Tom needed the lessons he learned from being single for 34 years. Some learn valuable lessons from not being able to have children, or struggling to have them. Some are shaped by having many children, some by few and others deal with illness, disability, divorce and death. Some struggle to love those in their family in charitable ways. The situations are endless, but they if we let them, they can refine us and truly make us what Heavenly Father intended us to be. What wonderful plan! And wonderful that we get to share it with those we love most---which is how God shares His love with us!

I am the first to admit that I haven't 'arrived' at becoming everything I need to become. But I'm so thankful for the path, although at times has been super rocky, that has led me to where I am. And I'm thankful for the Proclamation and this little Primary song that deepen my understanding and strengthen my resolve to continue to "become what He wants [me] to be. This is how He shares His love; For the family is of God!"