8.

FATHER'S AND PARENTING

In my study of our Heavenly Father's plan of Happiness and Perfection for each of us, I have concluded that we as "ascending" mortals must have experience in rearing children, and if we did not have that experience in our mortal life we will be given opportunities to raise the children of those who have died as babies or children or youth or in other ways have compensatory experience. 

     

I read this quote and have treasured it. "Fathers must pass through this essential experience (of parenting) just as certainly as mothers. It is an unfortunate and mistaken notion of modern peoples on Earth that child culture is largely the task of mothers. Children need fathers as well as mothers, and fathers need this parental experience as much as do mothers."  

I read an article about John Medina, the Christian biologist. It went on to say, "After years of biological research and several books on parenting conclusions, what is his answer to the question, “What’s the most important thing I can do as a father”?

“Go home and love your wife.”

Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam, the authors of Babywise, say it this way: “A healthy marriage creates an infused stability within the family and a haven of security for a child in their development process.” They go on to sum up their years of research by saying, “In the end, great marriages produce great parents.”

The point is that marriage has a higher goal than to make two people happy or even whole. Yes, the investment we make into our marriage pays dividends for us. But, concluded by Medina and his colleagues, the same investment also has significant implications for our family, our community and eventually our culture.

So men, women, the next time you find yourself dreaming about living significantly or succeeding in your career or being a better parent than yours were to you, do the world a favor: Go home and love your wife. Go home and and love your husband."

During my study of World Religions I discovered this wonderful quote:

"As long as we teach the child to pray, “Our Father who is in heaven,” a tremendous responsibility rests upon all earthly fathers so to live and order their homes that the word father becomes worthily enshrined in the minds and hearts of all growing children."

I found this loving letter that I wrote my Father, who we called Papa when we were very young.  He did not want us to call him DAD, as he felt it was disrespectful.  As we got older we called him FATHER.  He was a true pioneer, a hardworking man who homesteaded the acreage and helped dig the canals for irrigation.


June 18, 2000

A Heavenly Fax to:
George D.

Dear Father:
It is Father's Day in the year 2000!
I am 68 years of age.  I have a photo of you when you were that same age and now I have arrived at that age also!
Well, how is it in 'Heaven'….in the Mansion world experience?  It must be wonderful to have so many of your earthly loved ones there with you.  I was thinking that your Grandparents, Uncles and Aunties, cousins, Parents, Brothers and Sisters, your two wives, L and C and even your son, G, and Daughter A, as well as grandchildren, I's baby, S, and M so you certainly are surrounded with loved ones and I'm sure, many friends.
E has just now organized a GEORGE D site on our earthly internet communication system.  I know you have something better where you are, but for us it is amazing, marvelous, and incredible!  Most of your descendants have what is called a computer which has a keyboard like a typewriter.  It has a screen and as I write this letter, for example, I can see the letter in front of me.  It is so amazing because I can spell check, erase or change or delete or re arrange parts of the letter.  Then we have a world wide communication 'web' as we call it, and we can connect to it - I have no idea how this works - but you remember how the early TV was and how amazing it was - well it is something incredible like that!  Anyway everyone from their homes where ever they live in the world can connect to the GEORGE D family site and we can write to each other and share and communicate!  You probably have seen what our technology has developed and understand it better than I am explaining, but I just wanted to tell you about it.  So, now many of your descendants can be in communication with each other and hopefully a bond of love will develop that will be stronger than before.
I need to find out how many descendants you have, maybe E has figured it out.
I have seven children and 16 grandchildren!
3 sons, four daughters, 12 grandsons and 4 granddaughters.

I want to tell you that I appreciate you being my earthly Father.  I remember the good times we had.  I remember taking a little picnic lunch to you one day when you were working in the field.  We went up near the irrigation ditch behind the granary to eat the lunch Mother had prepared for us.  I remember you sitting in the mohair chair in the living room reading us the Christmas story every year.  I remember you milking the cows and working hard irrigating, or caring for the many animals.  I am amazed now when I even think of all the work you had to do to keep things going and all of us fed and clothed.  I remember you driving us to Church along the canal bank.  It was scary to me, but we always made it.  I remember going up in the Albion mountains someplace for a fourth of July picnic.  I don't remember where it was, but I remember it was wonderful to be in the mountains and hearing the water in the stream.  I remember we broke an egg into the half of an orange that had been taken out, and we put it on the embers of the campfire to cook and I remember it being so good.  I remember you were very dedicated to doing your best and living a good life. I am grateful you grew up in a good Latter day Saint home.  It is so impressive to me that you took care of your family and did the farm work while your Father served a mission for the church.  And then when you were called to serve a mission you went to New York City!  Imagine a young farm boy from Idaho going on a mission to New York City!  I'm also proud of the fact that you sang in the Tabernacle Choir for awhile.  And I think your father did also, is that right?  I am grateful for your dedication and determination to live a righteous life. Some people judged you as being too zealous and patriarchal, but I can see you were just very conscientious, so maybe sometimes you were more serious than joyful.   Perhaps the challenges you faced with rebellious children were a stress on you, as it has been on me. I hope you have forgiven me for the 'disobedience' of my teen years.  Those were rough years.  I sure wouldn't want to go through those years again, even in memory I have blocked out much of it and don't really want to dwell on those times.  It is truly a miracle that I made it through and I am sure the fact I did was because you and mother were praying so hard for me.  I am so grateful that our loving Heavenly Father has forgiven me for the many things I did that were just plain wrong.  I remember once you told me that you had a dream that there was a council in heaven and I was supposed to be apart of the council and it looked like I was failing and not going to make it and how they said that they would do all they could to see that I made it.  Something like that.  I remember that it stuck in my mind that you thought I was special and that God loved me and wanted me to succeed and it really helped me to make it through those terrible trying times of my teens and young adult hood.  I know you had six other children that went through those trying challenges besides me, but with knowing what I do about them, I think A and I had the worse time making it through.  Thanks for yours and mother's prayers in my behalf and thanks to the guardian angels who helped to get me back on course and for all the miracles that finally brought me to the birth of the spirit when I was 32 years of age.
I can say that the past years have been growing years, years of trials and adversity, yes, but years of great joy also.  I'm sure you know how that is, for truly we can have lots of problems in our life but when we look at the over all picture of our life we are so thankful we had the opportunity to live as a mortal.

Every day I thank our Heavenly Father for my life and for my birth into a good family with parents 'kind and dear'.  Give my love to mother.  Share this letter with her if you would like to.  I have written her several times, so I just thought it was about time I wrote to you, my Papa.
I will be seeing you, most likely, sometime in the next twenty years or so.  That should give you time to plan a big welcome party for me!  I will look 
forward to my return to personality awakening.  I am certain it was a big wonderful unforgettable event for you and it should be the same for me also.
Love always from your daughter, Truele