Every Parent's worst nightmare!

My friend, let’s call her Cecilia, was concerned about her teenage daughter. “Avery” had marked disposition and personality changes after she started to attend the local high school. Cecilia and her husband spent a lot of time and energy looking for answers. No stone was unturned; they had even requested a meeting with high school counselors and officials and asked if they had any clues to the problem. The high school officials professed no knowledge of any issues. Then Cecilia received a call from a friend. Avery had participated in the high school's Men’s pageant, as a boy.
     When Cecilia and her husband sat their daughter down to discuss the information, they found out that their daughter had decided she identified as a boy. Not only did the school lie about knowing what Avery was struggling with, but the school was also actively promoting and encouraging Avery’s new lifestyle choice. Her school counselor was providing her with pamphlets, they were identifying her as a male, and offered her access to community programs that would facilitate her choices.
     Because of the deception, the school had practiced on them, Cecilia and her husband decided they needed to pull Avery from school and work with her and a counselor of their choice. When the school became aware of the parents' intentions, they sent a social worker who told Avery’s parents that if they exercised their parental rights and pulled her/him from school, and if they did anything but fully support her lifestyle choice, they would remove Avery and all of Avery’s siblings from their home!
     I have known Avery and her family since she was a little girl. Both of her parents are actively engaged in parenting and are kind, generous, and loving people. They hold deep religious convictions, they believe in the words found in The Family; a Proclamation to the World that state;
    "We, the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, solemnly proclaim that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. . . .The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity."
     These loving parents were not O.K. with Avery’s choice, but I know that they would have worked  and used every resource offered to them to work towards understanding Avery's point of view. They would have found a compromise to live with until Avery was 18 years old and ready to leave home. Make no mistake, Cecilia and her husband would have stuck to their belief system but would have treated Avery with love and respect even in their firmest moments.
     What happened here was every parent’s worst nightmare! Some of you reading this will think I have made it up. You won’t believe that a government agency would/could strip parents of their rights in one fell blow. I believe that this is going to be more and more common. How did we get here you ask?
     I think the answer is found in the Supreme Court case of Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. (2015).  When the Court made a decision based on social policy instead of the law, the Majority opinion magnanimously promised to respect the rights of the religious dissenters. The claimed we would be able to “teach and advocate” according to our religious beliefs. They did not promise we could exercise our religious freedoms in our homes. In this case, Avery’s parents were not even allowed to teach or advocate for the lifestyle they felt would bring their daughter true happiness.
     This Supreme Court case wiped away religious protection with one broad stroke. No longer do we have the opportunity to discuss and move policy on this matter. This decision has taken away our rights as citizens to order our own lives. We need to be vocal and present in fighting for our religious liberties. Will you stand with me?

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation?lang=eng&old=true

                                             

                                               
      Working Toward Intentional Marriage

     President Dallin H. Oaks (2007) said, “We live in a world in which the whole concept of marriage is in peril and where divorce is commonplace.” As I look around me, I see the truth of his statement every corner of the world I live in. Next December I will be celebrating my 30th wedding anniversary. In those same thirty years, I have seen friends and family be successful and not so successful in their own marriages. I give a lot of the credit to my husband and to God that we have made it to this point. I don’t want to take our achievement for granted. I want to actively pursue and build my marriage, (I am hoping for another 30 years!)

     What do I need to do to ensure that my goal comes to pass? I want to be intentional about all things that have to do with my marriage. I want to explore all the cracks and crannies and expose my weaknesses and strengths to the light of day. I want to catalog what has gone right, what has gone wrong and give gratitude to my Savior for his hand in all of it. Some of the places that I will start were found in our readings this week.

     The most interesting discoveries I made this week were readings assigned in my Family 300 level course concerning transitional characters. Carlfred Broderick (1992), a well-known psychologist, family therapist, author and one-time professor of marriage and family relations at the University of Southern California, explains that a “transitional character is one who, in a single generation, changes the entire course of a lineage.”  Broderick points out that the transitional character can choose to make the change for good or bad and the effects can last through multiple generations. One example can be an alcoholic that passes on his behavior, his lack of hope, to his children. They, in turn, would likely perpetuate the cycle, leading to their own children making poor choices about addicting substances (Broderick, 1987)

      Transitional characters and the role they play in their posterity’s lives, that is such a compelling conversation that I want to have (Broderick, 1987)! When a person steps away from the life that they are living and makes a choice that changes generations, that is powerful. My grandmother challenged all the darkness that included an abusive first husband and a divorce, which back in her day, divorce was not a popular choice. Although she was raised in a home that loved God, she felt that the answers her Baptist background gave her about "Who she was, where she was going, and why she was here on the earth," were not enough. These questions led her to a point in history where she made a choice that would affect her children and children's children through the years to come. 

      My grandmother met my grandfather, an officer in the air force, stationed at Fort Benning on New Year’s Eve 1943. Just as divorcee’s had a “reputation,” the soldiers had the same notoriety. My grandmother resisted my grandfather’s attention but quickly came to see that there was something different about this Texan soldier. Through my grandfather’s influence, my grandmother found the gospel and chose to leave her family’s faith to join his. She also had to put her ugly, abusive first marriage behind her and give my Grandfather trust that she thought she would never be able to reinvest. Her leap of faith translated into a family that has multiple generations of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her faith and devotion shaped my mother. My mother’s faith and devotion, in turn, formed mine. All that I have that is good in my life stems from the gospel. I am forever grateful for her choice that helped bring me to the place I am now.

      My grandmother made intentional choices that have changed generations. I love that she recognized all the good that her parents gave her, but had the vision to know there was more out there to find. I love that!  I hope to use this blog to honor all those who have assisted me in my journey up to this point. I want to search, study, ponder, and prayerfully find ways to help me, my children, and grandchildren, stay the course we are on and in the journey become more than who we are now! Are you a transitional character? Do you have transitional characters in your life or lineage that you want to give gratitude for? How can their examples help us to be more intentional in our marriages, homes, and family life?

Not sure who took this picture of my grandparents but I grabbed this one from my Aunt Lourena and would like to give her photo credit! She is the BEST!                                              

                                                          Works Cited

Broderick, Carlfred (1992). Marriage and the Family. New Jersey:       Prentice-Hall

 Oaks, D. H. (2007, April). Divorce - Dallin H. Oaks. Retrieved from     https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2007/04/divorce?lang=eng