I was alone on a business trip in Canada when my brother called to tell me our father had died of a massive heart attack.
That sudden parting brought a grief as dark and impenetrable as the moonless, starless sky through which I flew home a few hours later. Staring into the blackness, I felt as bleak as that sky looked. Forlorn, I felt a rawness of soul that made breathing painful and sleep impossible. I searched for comfort in moments of prayer and passages of scripture. I soaked in the Savior’s words, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25) because I so needed that reassurance.
It was not until I embraced members of my family in the sunlight of the following day that I recalled that it was my father and mother who had taught me that in my personal prayers and scripture study I could find comfort. And I did feel peace in knowing that the spiritual skills my parents had taught me were precisely what I turned to first when one of them left mortality.
From this and many other experiences of tragedy and joy, I have learned the importance of families. As a single woman who longs for a good husband and my own children, I often look with wonder at the joining of man and wife to raise little ones and care for big ones. I treasure the richness, challenge, and diversity of family relationships.
Family relationships are not easy. How could they be when they are such an important and long-standing training ground? Friends, colleagues, and neighbors may come and go, but family relationships endure. We are, after all, sealed in the temple with the potential to become eternal family units, not eternal business partnerships or neighborhoods.
The Lord often teaches us through family settings. Even a cursory look at the scriptures and Church doctrine shows that the Lord uses familial relationships as the means to help us understand critical truths. Consider these few:
- We have Heavenly Parents. We are their literal sons and daughters.
- The Savior is often identified by family names, including the Son of Man (Matt. 9:6) and the only begotten Son (John 1:18).
- Alma the elder explained to his people the fruit of unity and love: “And thus they became the children of God” (Mosiah 18:22).
- James defined “pure religion” in part as “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27).
- Each week at Church we even call each other “brother” and “sister.”
Family relationships, even figurative ones, link us. Our lineage links us inextricably. With the help of my own much-loved parents, siblings, and extended family, I’ve learned much about what family relationships can be at their best, their funniest, their wobbliest, and their worst. I do not claim to understand the myriad of family circumstances in which we Church members find ourselves. I have concluded, though, that striving to bless each other is the least we can do as family members.
When my dad dropped me off at the airport for my business trip, I gave him a hug, and said, “Thanks, Dad. I love you.” Those were the last words I spoke to him in mortality.
I hope “I love you” is tacit in all I do for and with my family.
