Divorce and the Family

          "Life is better and much happier as hearts turn toward family and as families live in the light of the gospel of Christ."-M Russell Ballard.

           In our latter-days, we are witnessing now more than ever a decline in the traditional family and the values that come with it. As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I am striving every day to become the individual the Lord wants me to be in order for me to get sealed to my future companion. I am taught that having a healthy and loving relationship will increase my own well-being and will in turn carry on with my children as they witness what kind of a marriage their parents have. 

            One morning during my 6^th grade school year, my mom came in to wake me up for school and I remember her sitting on my bed and telling me that her and my father were going to be getting a divorce. In all honesty, I had seen that coming from a mile away. They had been participating in marriage counseling for a few months, but every piece of advice their counselor gave to them seemed as if it were being forced between the two. To add on the stress of my family, my little brother was diagnosed with Leukemia on his fourth birthday, just weeks after the news about my parents. Being the oldest, I had the weight of all my siblings on my shoulders while my parents were in the hospital with my brother. While seeing how my parents acted with one another, my siblings and I really payed attention to this and their divorce has been something that we are all still dealing with and has affected us in more ways than we would care to admit. Studies have shown that children coming from a divorced household have a higher risk of having academic, behavioral, and emotional problems.

            After my own personal experience with the affect a divorce can have on not only the couple, but to their children as well, I am motivated to create a different outcome for my own future marriage. There is a quote by Dieter F. Uchtdorf that I love. He says, “Great marriages are built brick by brick, day after day, over a lifetime.” I think as a society we have this fairytale idea that marriage is something that comes easy. That if it truly is meant to be, you won’t ever have arguments, that you will never disagree, and so on. But that is not the case. The most successful marriages are a testament of how hard that couple has worked on their relationship. You need to work past your problems, work past your disagreements, and it all has to come from a place of love and respect from one another.

            Choosing an eternal partner is something that should not be taken lightly. Your companionship with set the course for your eternal family. We should all strive to create a household of love, of respect, and of faith. And that all begins with the parents. I hope that as I continue to learn more about marriage, and try to change the course of my family’s rough past, that I will one day find a husband with whom I can share my whole soul with, President Gordon B. Hinckley says it best, “Choose a companion you can always honor, you can always respect, one who will complement you in your own life, one to whom you can give your entire heart, your entire love, your entire allegiance, your entire loyalty.” I hope that each one of us will choose or have already chosen someone that they will continue to grow in love with, for the rest of eternity.