My family isn't anything like what Mormons would consider to be the ideal family. The way we talk about families as these loving places of safety, let alone the literal manifestation of God's providence?
That's not my family's narrative. It never has been.
It has made me think a lot about what we could say and do differently to avoid making people feel excluded, or like God somehow made a mistake with their family.
One thing that will help with this is to get rid of blanket statements that lump all families together. Never assume the person in front of you at church has had a life anything like yours. "We all understand" or "we all know" or "anyone in this room" statements have got to go.
Another is for those with loving families to be more aware of how they talk about their families in our meetings. I don't have a problem with people who come from loving, functional households expressing the love and gratitude they feel for their families. But no family in the Church is more valuable than any other, and a relationship with the Church doesn't guarantee that family won't still be dysfunctional. Dysfunctional families don't get that way because the people in them have done anything wrong, or are guilty of some glaring moral failure that has disqualified them from God's love. That's not how divine love and moral agency works.
I come from three generations of divorced women who have survived every kind of challenge imaginable. The women in my family are the strongest women I have ever known. They are not failures. They have triumphed over human suffering with courage, grace, and grit. Anyone would be privileged to know them.
I've heard people thank God for allowing them to be born into families with the restored gospel. I've heard them refer to their parents and family members as the choicest spirits of heaven. But members of the church don't have a monopoly on that. I'm grateful I was born into a family that isn't part of the church. I'm grateful for the choice spirits Heavenly Father has sent to my family, to heal generations of pain and suffering. They were also called and chosen to do a great work, one that many members of the Church would never volunteer for.
I'm grateful that God cares enough about my family to reclaim and redeem them, with the exact vision to make us equal in stature to any other person born in the covenant. I'm grateful that Christ sees no ultimate difference between me and anyone else.
My family may not be perfect. But that family has given me my grandmother, who is the most Christ-like person I have ever known. I wouldn't trade her for the most perfect of all functional Mormon families that has ever existed. She doesn't just love people when it is easy, when people do what is right. She has loved people through the worst they could do to themselves and to those she loves. She doesn't judge. She never takes their pictures down in her house. The way I see it, the Church can only reward her. There's nothing they could do to improve her incredible soul.
God doesn't give us the families we "deserve" or "earn." He gives us the families where we can do the most good and grow the most through our associations with them. For most of the human race, that means being born outside of the Church. That is not a mistake or misfortune. It's the wisdom of God, who ultimately doesn't need his children to be born into a single religious community to have meaningful relationships with them.
