Divorce & Remarriage.

This weeks discussion was very insightful because my parents got a divorce, and it always seems when you've personally been through something its easier to learn from. Obviously from my last post, I think it shows, that my parents did a pretty good job. They we're married for 32 years, they almost raised all they're kids, all we're married except my brother and I. When my parents got a divorce it was after a big change in their lives we had moved from a small town where we we're established and now we we're in a new place with really no family around. My parents both went through some midlife crisis and their divorce was sadly the outcome of it.
The investing thing of it all is my parents have some of the most strong and stable testimonies of anyone I know, and so that was something I molled around in my brain a bit this week. How can two people with such strong testimonies and conviction for the gospel get divorced. Well its one thing to KNOW something and another to apply it in our daily lives, if that we're the easy part we'd all be perfect. One thing I did discover though is that even though my parents divorced, to this day they still have not condoned it. I think this is huge. My parents knew and still know the choice they made was not the right one. All know that if they tried as hard at their old marriages as they are at their new it would have all worked out.
I was talking to my dad about it one day on the way to a family get together, it was a couple hour drive so we had time to talk. One of my favorite scriptures is the one in first nephi where it says it is better that one man perish than a whole nation dwindle in unbelief. Now this scripture is referring to a bad man dying so that he wouldn't bring others down with him. However a couple years ago in institute our teacher asked us to find types of Christ. Scriptures that we wouldn't think we're talking about Christ but through symbolic glasses we would see that it did. This scripture was shared by a young man and I have never seen it the same. It is better that one man perish, Christ, then a whole nation, world, dwindle in unbelief. Mind Blown right?
Well on this drive I decided to take this scripture at a different angle. Like I said my parents know what they did was not right, and they worry that they're kids will follow in their footsteps. This is the analogy I drew up for my dad and I felt, even though it was just me saying it, that it could have had some truth to it.
I said Dad ok, imagine you and mom are sitting on a bench in heaven before you we're born talking about the increasing divorce rate on the earth. You also we're talking about the seven kids that you both would raise(assuming you know this type of information in heaven) and how all of them would have marriages of their own. As parents do you set out to form a plan of how to teach your children that divorce is not the answer. What if this scripture came into your head. "It is better that one marriage perish than 7 marriages dwindle in unbelief." What if you and mom thought what if they only way to show them that divorce is not the answer is to show them that if divorce is chosen, all the heartache and pain that comes from it.
Even though this is a far fetched idea that wasn't probably planned, the outcome i think well still be the same. All of my siblings me included have seen that divorce is defiantly not the easy way out, that as hard as marriage is, divorce is harder.

Parenting

This I found very insightful. The biggest thing I learned was from reading my mom’s journals. I learned that financial strain does not always have to have a negative affect on your family. In my case, it is as was put in this recent general conference. “I did not raise my family on money, I raised them on faith.” I learned that we all have the strong testimonies we do because my mom taught us with the real life hardships we had to turn to our father in heaven for help. We learned that without true sorry you do not know true joy. That means huge things for my future family. That means that no matter the hardships we endure if I can teach my family that we go together and seek the Lords help that will be the best trial ever. I learned from the over all that family is the most important thing in a child’s life, and with family around, no matter what is happening it will be okay because you can pull together. Family is where you get some needs met that isn’t met from parents.

I learned from my parents opposite parenting tactics that even though the seemed polar opposites that they often had the same outcome, weather good or bad, and that I needed to watch for that in my parenting. I learned that my parents actually did some emotion coaching but they would end it with a spank. I think the spank for me at the end wasn’t just a mute point but rather more harm than good. So basically physical punishment is pointless.

I also think I might have finally found a solution for a fear I’ve had with my own children and that solution was that they won’t go looking to fulfill their needs in other unhealthy ways, if you will just sit down and spend quality time with them. This is something I have been racking my brain trying to figure out and now that I think I have found the solution, I am going to try my hardest to remember it. I realized that even though I was raised to value being anxiously engaged in a good cause that your greatest cause, as a mother is your child. Even if it is sitting down on the ground playing babies with them, when you could be making bread for a sick lady in your ward your kids are more important, for the time you spend with them now will be what truly makes them into great people later.