Our Goal

A couple of weeks ago, my family had a very special evening when my little sister went to the temple. (To learn more about temples and why they are to our family go here.) Since Lindsey is the youngest, my parents had all their children in the temple with them. You can imagine the emotion and how special this was for our family. For my family, the temple is a reminder of the purpose in life and our goal to be with God again as an eternal family. We had a glimpse of heaven that day.

Not all families get to experience this special moment. We all know that no matter how wonderful parents may be, their children still have agency and can make their own choices. My parents did do many things right though, and so in tribute to Father's Day and well, Mother's Day a month ago, I wanted to share what my parents did to be great parents. Hopefully Zane and I will follow in their footsteps.

1. My parents were very good about having family scripture study and family prayer (and then evening prayer as a family). I remember it most when I was in middle school because I didn't have school until 9 am, but we were up at 5:20 a.m. having scripture study before Jared, the oldest, left for seminary. Having it this early in the morning meant that at times it wasn't the most productive study, but we had a pattern that we stuck with. After scripture study and prayer, some of us got to go back to bed depending on the piano schedule. (Just as a side note to all parents who want their kids to learn an instrument. We always practiced before school. We rotated who had the earliest slot, but by 6:00 a.m., someone was practicing the piano. All five of my siblings play the piano. It is all a credit to my mom's dedication to our practicing.)

2. We always ate dinner as a family. This got hard when we were in High School and busy with choir and sports, but my parents made sure it was a priority.

3. We tried to have Family Home Evening every week. My parents started doing it on Sunday because we usually had choir practices Monday night. Some might not agree with that, but we had it. That was the important fact. Because each of us took turns doing the lessons, we learned the gospel better by teaching it.

4. We have a very open relationship with my parents. As kids, we could always talk to them especially my mom because she was always there with us after school since she put being a mother first in her life. My dad was a great listener and I could talk to him for hours.

5. My parents had high expectations for us. This really came from my mom. We all knew we were expected to get good grades, get scholarships, and put ourselves through college. She was right there helping us reach those goals. (My mom would edit our papers and since I usually finished my papers about 2 a.m., that meant a very late night for her. It also didn't help that she taught seminary at 6 a.m. so she usually went without sleep with me.) I struggled the most in school because I wasn't blessed with the natural intelligence that the rest of the kids were (and I'm ok with this.) I remember crying my junior year because I got a C in pre-cal. I was the only kid in my family to ever get a C in high school. I was so worried about disappointing my mom, but she was right there comforting me. She knew how hard I worked for that C and so was proud of me. Her expectations were that we did our best. To this day, we hurt our mom the most when she thinks we are not doing our best in some aspect of our lives.

6. I could go on longer and talk about how my parents made sure they had a good marriage, watching them take time out of their busy schedules to drive to Dallas for temple trips, watching how they served in their callings, the many family vacations that brought us close together, and all the fun family activities we had. My family wasn't perfect, there were a lot of hard times, but all these activities sure helped!

I think that's long enough. Thanks mom and dad for being great parents and super grandparents!