We have both talked with teenagers who felt completely broken up inside as their parents were going through a divorce. For example, we’re thinking a young woman who felt that the divorce was her fault, a young woman who knew it wasn’t her fault, but she really missed her dad, and a young man who was torn between living with his mother and father.
The Destinies of Nations
Today is the day we honor the women in our lives, specifically our own mothers who gave us life, who nurtured and raised and fed and clothed us, who taught and tutored and showed us, who comforted and counseled and consoled us. Above all, who loved us. To all the mothers out there, we wish you a happy Mothers’ day, and cannot thank you enough for being givers of life.
Maybe everybody in your family attends church. If so, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. Many members of the church have parents or siblings who don’t attend church. They aren’t alone. Many church leaders have come from homes where family members were not active in the church. For example, Elder Richard G. Scott’s mother was less-active, and his father was not a member of the church. Elder David A. Bednar’s father was not a member of the church while he was growing up.
One of the best ways you can help less-active family members come back to church is to be the very best person you can be. President Hinckley often said “The most effective tract we will carry will be the goodness of our own lives” (Ensign, May 1999, 107). As family members see the goodness of your life they will be more likely to want to participate in the gospel.
As we’ve taught seminary and other classes, we’ve noticed that when this question is asked, many people are interested in the answer. Divorce affects several people, and we want to know who we will be sealed to.
What a great question!
One reason why a curfew is good is summed up in a quotation by President Hinckley. We included it in our book as a tip for saying morally clean: “Nothing really good happens after 11 o’clock at night” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “To the Women of the Church,” Ensign, Nov 2003, 113).
The Doctrine and Covenants says, “Retire to thy bed early that ye may not be weary” (D&C 88:124). Having a curfew is starting to sound like a good idea!
This is a hard question because all our personal situations are different with our parents. However, we would do well to remember two things: 1) Sometimes our parents want different things for us than we do because (and we hate to say this, but its true), they know better than we do. Think of all the wisdom and knowledge you have gained over the last three years of your life. Are you a little wiser, more mature, more insightful, more experienced, and have better perspective now than you did then? Now multiply that by 10, and that is probably how much wiser, more insightful, and more experienced your parents are than you. Think of this in regards to our relationship with our Heavenly Father: Do we ever want things different than what He is telling us? Not thy will, but mine be done? Many times. But who is right? We tend to lean towards the all-knowing and all-loving God.
Of the Ten Commandments that God gave to Moses, only one came with a stated promise:
the fifth commandment, which says, “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be
long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee” (Exodus 20:12; emphasis added). The
scriptures don’t spell out exactly how it is that your days will be long, but common sense dictates
that those who honor their parents will probably live longer than if they didn’t.
