Joy in Our Posterity

It is difficult to be a parent.  A few stressors of parenting are: providing for the family, teaching consistently, caring for children, always looking for a tool that has wondered away from its place in my tool box, and so on.  This is the reality of parenting.

When I became a husband, I promised to be the best husband and father to the children that might come.  Before marriage, my wife and I decided that six children sounded like a good number.  After number four we were convinced we were done.  Our seventh child just had her second birthday.  Little did I know, seven children would turn my hair gray and teach me lessons of patience and long-suffering.

This week I was out of town for work.  While I was away, my daughter had her second birthday.  Over the phone, she was “showing me” her birthday gifts.  She stammered through telling me “Happy birthday to you” and babbled about her new horses she received as birthday gifts. Listening to her happiness melted my heart, it was amazing. This little joy experienced over a long-distance phone call was worth all the messy diapers and toddler disasters in the house. I know that joy truly comes from our posterity and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Photo Source

Since the beginning of time man and woman have been commanded to multiply and replenish the earth. The purpose of multiplying is to have joy in our posterity. Elder Bruce C. Hafen stated, “Without the Fall, Lehi taught, Adam and Eve would never have known opposition. And ‘they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery,’” (Hafen, 1996, para. 5, 2 Ne 2:23). The interesting fact is that Adam and Eve needed to leave the Garden of Eden and experience misery and have children to experience the joy that opposition can bring.  When I think of how I was supposed to have children in order to learn patience and be refined into a better person. My children have caused me frustration, have tested my character, and in short have made me the person I am today.

-Mr.