Where They Went Wrong

For a while now, I've had some thoughts brewing that I have felt I should put into a blog post, but I haven't quite been able to articulate what I want to say. I have the impression that someone, somewhere needs to read this. That is not to boast, nor to attribute anything wonderful to myself, it is only to say that I feel this needs to be shared, even if it is only for one person out there to stumble across and benefit from.

I have always been fascinated by and curious about families. When a couple gets divorced, I want to know why. It's not that I want the "hot gossip" or the "inside scoop." I'm just genuinely interested in why marriages and families succeed or fail. I want to know why a couple who has been married for thirty years finally decides to split up. Mostly, I want to know if Scotty and I are anything like that couple. Is there something in our marriage that I can't see? Something that would eventually bring us to the point of divorce?

Likewise, for many years, I have observed families whose children stray from the values they were brought up with, and I have seen the devastation this brings the parents. Particularly religious families. As a religious person, there are many values I hope my children will take with them through adulthood. They have their agency to choose or deny those values, of course, but it is my ultimate goal to raise children who will live the same values I do (hopefully they'll improve upon them).  I hope that my children will serve missions, wait until they are married before having sexual relations, refrain from drinking alcohol or doing drugs, get a college education, and live an honest and good life, in general. Some of those values are frowned upon in today's society, and I know there will be people reading this who thinking I am close-minded or judgmental. There's not much I can say to convince you otherwise, but I will say that it's okay if your values differ from mine. We can still be friends. I don't look down on you or think you're "bad." I also know that my children might not choose to live my values, and while I might be disappointed, I will still love and cherish them.

When I have seen families who have children who stray from their values, I have always wondered where did they go wrong? I'm not intending to be judgmental, but I want to know what triggered the straying so I can know if Scotty and I are leading our children in that same direction. I've always been especially curious about the families who have seemingly done everything "right" - the ones who have always been great examples of Christ-like service and who have followed all the counsel of the prophets. They had family home evening, daily prayer and scripture study, and the whole bit! Where did they go wrong? I've also been guilty of looking at families who haven't "done everything right" and assuming I have the right to say where the foul up was.

A while ago, I read a book called Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage by H. Wallace Goddard. In this book, Goddard recounted an experience of Carlfred Broderick, an LDS psychologist and family therapist. Broderick was serving as stake president when he was called upon to give a blessing to a woman who appeared to bring family misery upon herself by her choice in husbands. She had married in the temple, and shortly after, her husband left the Church. He ended up luring all four of their children into his "faith-deprived lifestyle." During the blessing, Broderick discovered, through revelation from the Lord, that this woman "had chosen to take these trials as part of her covenant to rescue some of God's children who would struggle in mortality."

Broderick shared this story in a BYU Women's Conference address entitled "The Uses of Adversity," which you can read here. He explained of this woman, "She... had signed up for hard children, for children who had rebellious spirits but who were valuable; for a hard husband who had a rebellious spirit but who was valuable. The Lord alluded to events in her life that I hadn't known about...I repented. I realized I was in the presence of one of the Lord's great noble spirits, who had chosen not a safe place behind the lines pushing out the ordnance to the people in the front lines as I was doing, but somebody who chose to live out in the trenches where the Lord's work was being done, where there was risk, where you could be hurt, where you could lose, where you could be destroyed by your love. That's the way she had chosen to labor."

It was probably common for people to look at this woman and think where did she go wrong? They would probably then identify her husband and assume she shouldn't have married him. Surely her children wouldn't have strayed if she hadn't married that man! But no one really knows that. People might have also thought that she raised her children too permissively or that she didn't teach them correct principles. Are those assumptions true? We can never know. The point is, it's very possible that the answer to "Where did she go wrong?" is "Nowhere. She did exactly what the Lord needed her to do."

This story completely changed the way I think about wayward children. I no longer wonder where the parents "went wrong." I now look at them and think of the special task they have been given, and I remember that God has orchestrated our lives to a greater extent than we realize.