Here's my talk that I gave today in my Surprise Young Single Adult Branch. I hope you like it!
Today I am going to answer the question: what are eternal families to me and what can I do to prepare to have my own eternal family? The past couple weeks I’ve been able to study about marriage and families, and I hope that I can pass on what I have learned to you. I pray for the Spirit to be here as I testify of truth.
Temples and Eternal Families
I may not know a ton about marriage, but I do know about eternal families. I am blessed to have an amazing family, albeit a crazy one. I’ve been thinking a lot about my late Grandma Wagher these past couple of weeks, so I thought it was a nice coincidence that I would be talking about something that she taught her family so often. But, of course, it wasn’t a coincidence at all. God knows me and He knows that I have a testimony of eternal families. In one of my grandma’s blogs, that I read often, she says this about temples: “Ties that bind generations of families long passed are put into place in those buildings. Vows are spoken between people who never have to say the most awful words ever imagined by people who love each other…"Till death do us part." Now, thanks to Christ, instead we can say, “For time and all eternity.”
The resurrection of Jesus Christ did indeed change everything about death. For those of us who know that miracle to be true, or who maybe just think that it’s probably true, or who even only hope desperately that it is true….it changed everything about life too.
We live differently because we know the truth.”
Our temple covenants allow us to be sealed to our families for time and all eternity. We have to make sacrifices to be in the temple, we have to “live differently” to prepare to be worthy to enter God’s presence. But the blessings that we gain far outweigh the sacrifices we make.
In the most recent general conference, President Russel M. Nelson counseled, “Positive spiritual momentum increases as we worship in the temple and grow in our understanding of the magnificent breadth and depth of the blessings we receive there. I plead with you to counter worldly ways by focusing on the eternal blessings of the temple. Your time there brings blessings for eternity.”
I am so grateful for my grandparents who chose to embrace the gospel of Christ and to raise their children in this church. I would not be here today without them and the countless sacrifices they made to enter the temple and be sealed together as a family. I know that I will one day see them again because of the covenants that we have made in the temple.
Marriage
We read in the Family Proclamation that “the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.” Elder Christofferson says that “[marriage] is the “link in the chain of the generations” both here and hereafter—the order of heaven.” The first step to having an eternal family is the eternal covenant of marriage.
So what are we all waiting for? I think we all want to get married and start our own families to add our own link to the eternal chain, but it’s not as simple as wanting it.
Sister Sara Lee Gibb once told a story in a BYU Devotional. She says,
“One of my students answered my query “To what do you look forward in the future?” by stating that he really wanted an eternal family and the blessing of having them all go back to live with Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ. The problem was that he had so many things to do that he didn’t have time to worry about it very much—much less to set one more goal. He was willing but very distracted.
What does it take to get our attention? This good brother who had righteous desires but felt that he could not fulfill them because he was too busy in school will probably find that his life will fill up just as much when he is out of school. We are often caught up in the busy demands and choices of life. Soon we look back and realize that a year or five years or 10 years have gone by and we are still saying that someday we will get to the things that we wish and need to do. How sad it will be if we spend our lives climbing ladders only to find that they are against the wrong walls…
We only have so much time in a day, in a year, in a lifetime. We have to decide what it is that is important to us. What do we value and care deeply about? Then and only then will we be able to keep our sights on eternal perspectives and avoid distraction.”
I have thought a lot about this concept. I remember thinking when I was in school that as soon as I graduated I would be done with homework and tests and I would have so much more time to study my scriptures and I would actually study for an hour a day like I did on the mission and everything would just be better because I would have so much more time. But now I’ve been graduated for 3 years, survived a global pandemic with months of quarantine, and I did not study as much as I should have, as much as I said I was going to.
If we don’t do the important things when we are busy, we are not going to do them when we are not busy, either. We have to make the time to do the important things no matter what. Things like reading our scriptures, fulfilling our callings, and yes, even dating. I learned this the hard way, and I’ve been working on doing the things that matter most every day, instead of being distracted in the day to day things.
According to General Authorities, “the majority of adult Church members are now unmarried, widowed, or divorced.” President Ballard said the following during the April 2021 General Conference, “Brothers and sisters, more than half of adults in the Church today are widowed, divorced, or not yet married. Some wonder about their opportunities and place in God’s plan and in the Church. We should understand that eternal life is not simply a question of current marital status but of discipleship and being “valiant in the testimony of Jesus.” The hope of all who are single is the same as for all members of the Lord’s restored Church—access to the grace of Christ through “obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.”’
We should all strive to obtain an eternal marriage, but if we are stuck in the waiting, remember that we are loved, and God has a work for us to do right now.
I love what Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf has to say about this:
“In the meantime, do not wait for someone else to make your life complete. Stop second-guessing yourself and wondering if you are defective. Instead, seek to reach your potential as a child of God. Seek learning. Become engaged in a meaningful career, and seek fulfillment in service to others. Use your time, your talents, and your resources to improve yourself and bless those around you. All of this is part of your preparation for having a family. Immerse yourself in your ward or branch and seek to magnify your callings, no matter what they may be.
The great purpose of this mortal existence is to learn to fully love our Heavenly Father and our neighbor as ourselves. If we do this with all our might, mind, and strength, our eternal destiny will be glorious and grand beyond our capacity to imagine. Be faithful, and things will work out for you. That is His eternal promise to all who love and honor Him.”
You Get to Be the Mom
To end my talk today I wanted to tell another one of my Grandma’s stories. She tells us about her early family life, that may or may not be similar to your own family situation.
She says, “I grew up in a loving home with 3 younger siblings and wonderful parents. There was great love between my mother and father and they were devoted to our family. My parents believed in God but didn’t raise us in any organized religion. I had never heard of [the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] and knew little except the snippets of the Catholic faith my grandmother brought with her when she visited.
Then one terrible day in early spring when I was 11, my 39 year old father was killed in a car accident on his way home from work. I remember my mother being completely devastated……put on sedatives by our doctor….and then after the haze of those first terrible days…sedated almost always by alcohol. I don’t remember seeing my mother as she had been before ever again. It seemed truly as if both of our parents had died in that awful crash.
Then, day by day, alcohol slowly killed my mother. I learned a frightening lesson watching her during my teenage years…drinking can end your life years before it actually kills you. And your life is not all that’s at stake.
Dad had thankfully provided well for us financially but things were not good in our home during my teenage years. I was the oldest of 4 kids….my youngest sister just a toddler when our father was killed…2 brothers who needed a dad…an alcoholic mom…you get the picture. It’s important to remember too that this was the early 60’s…a different time as far as accepted moral standards go. This was back in the day of the sit-com mom who supposedly cleaned house in heels and a string of pearls and was the picture of propriety and proper conduct.
Well, one Saturday I remember being picked up by the girls on my high school softball team to head to 6 AM practice. I came out the door at the first honk to a station wagon full of my teammates….someone’s mom driving the lot of us to the school field. Some of these girls were the most popular at school and I longed to feel a part of their circle. Nice girls, they were, from nice families, like ours used to be, with moms who did wear pearls while cleaning house, I just knew. As I opened the door one of them asked loudly… “Isn’t that your mom’s boyfriend’s car? What is it doing here so early in the morning? Did he spend the night?”
There was suddenly a deafening silence in the car while everyone began to think of the answer to that question and my face began to burn in shame. The mom who was driving quickly changed the subject and headed to the school. As we all were piling out of the car lugging bats and gloves, girls chattering all at once, the mother, a lady I barely knew, called me over to her car window. When the others had gone she said, “I just wanted you to know something very important. I wanted you to know that you can have a wonderful, loving family again. One with a mother and father. Parents who are happy and whole together…who love and take care of their children. It’s important that you know that.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked at her. I barely knew this lady. How did she know about me? You don’t know us, I said. You don’t know how things are. How? How can that possibly be?
“You get to be the mom,” she said gently.
She was right. Of course she was right. We each build our own lives. There was little I could do about my present situation but the future is what we each make of it. I never forgot what she said. It’s given me hope, comfort, and a kick in the pants many times since. I’ll always be grateful that she took the time to speak them.”
I love those words. “You get to be the mom.” You may not have had a perfect family situation growing up, or maybe you did. Either way, your future is what you make of it, and “the future is as bright as your faith.”
Conclusion
My grandmother’s life wasn’t perfect, not even after she and my grandfather joined the church. But I know that from that point on she worked hard to raise an eternal family and to teach her kids truth and light. I hope and pray that we all can do the same for our children one day, and that we will strive to find a worthy eternal companion to make that possible. Don’t sit around waiting for “an eternal companion to appear on [your] doorstep with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and an engagement ring in the other.” Have faith, make an effort, and trust in God’s timing.
I know that families can be together forever. We will all live again because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I know that temples are the Houses of God, and they provide saving ordinances for all those who are worthy and ready to enter them. I know that God loves me and all of His children. He wants each of us to come back to Him, and I know that that is possible because of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer.
