Green Oasis

I felt smugly self-satisfied that I had gotten the right answer. I turned in my essay to my eighth-grade English teacher. She had assigned us to write on how we defined success. I felt sure that my classmates had written about schools and careers and other worldly pursuits. Instead, I took the moral high ground with the help of a Prophet of the Mormon church.

My church leaders repeatedly emphasized this teaching: “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.” (Benjamin Disraeli as paraphrased by President David O. McKay) The church prepared all young men to become husbands and fathers. Our whole lives should be centered around marriage and fatherhood, just like our Heavenly Father.

I wrote about being a father and husband because of the church’s teaching. I considered any other goal petty and trivial. I had written about the only worthy goal. I fantasized that my teacher would recognize the moral superiority of my goals and applaud my wisdom. That never happened. I probably received a good grade based on the mechanics of the essay (i.e. thesis, support, support, support, conclusion), but I never heard from her about its content.

All the same, Disraeli’s catchy phrase shaped how I feel today. I still believe that my wife and children should receive my first attention. They should expect to receive the best of me, leaving the leftovers for my other pursuits. My fondest hopes lie in the continued health and happiness of my family. My family gives me my greatest joy. I look forward to time with my wife and girls at the end of the day. They keep me going.

I could have learned this attitude from some other source, but I didn’t. I learned it from the Mormon church.

I immediately noticed the motorcycle decor in his modest home. My missionary companion and I had been in his neighborhood so we decided to visit this inactive member of the congregation we served. We had heard that he hadn’t attended church in years, so we decided to see what we could do to bring him back into the fold.

Motorcycles didn’t interest me, but I asked him about them anyway in the interest of building relationships of trust. For the next couple of hours he regaled us with stories about his new Harley-Davidson Softail. I heard about truly insane hill climbing trials. I picked up new phrases fraught with wisdom like “Loud pipes save lives,” and “There’s only two kinds of riders: the old and the bold.” He made something of a convert out of me by the end. When I later served in Buffalo NY, I made sure to buy a 75^th anniversary t-shirt from the Harley-Davidson/Buell store.

After two hours, we finally got down to business and asked him why he didn’t come to church anymore. His answer forever changed my attitude about church service. This older man had converted to Mormonism early on when the LDS church wasn’t well established in the area. The church asked a lot of its members back then. It was routine for him to spend almost every night away from home on assignments for the church. After a while, this began to wear on his family life. He decided to leave the church to save his family.

We gave him some unsatisfactory excuses about the church not being like that anymore and how his attendance would strengthen his family. I didn’t think the excuses would convince him, and they didn’t. He thanked us for the visit, and sent us on our way. I left his home convinced that he was making a short-sighted choice, but he had planted a thought in my mind.

My wife was taking classes at the university to finish her degree. I watched our new daughter on the nights Lacey had classes on campus. I was serving in the Elders Quorum presidency and feeling the pressure to be away from my family on the nights Lacey didn’t have classes. Home Teaching always needed to be done. I needed to go out with the missionaries once a month. We needed to make visits to members’ homes as a presidency. Various congregation members had little emergencies that needed attention. I needed to attend the ward’s monthly temple night. We needed to meet with the Elders in the quorum for monthly interviews. The list goes on.

I probably could have been away from home most evenings, but David O. McKay and the Biker from Hamburg NY whispered from the back of my mind. A lot of the things that I could have allowed to take me away from home seemed less important than being with my family. I began to build up a boundary between my family and church service.

I had always heard that serving the church also brought blessings to the family. Serving God would call down blessings from heaven on my home. My leaders intended this to justify all the hours spent away from family in the service of the church’s needs. The tension between this idea and Disraeli’s “No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home.” forced me to find a balance between the two ideas. I decided to serve in the church, but only if my personal attention to a church job was more important than time with my family. I felt justified by God in saying no to uninspired activities. A night of wandering around with the missionaries trying to find someone to talk to didn’t often make the cut.

While serving in the presidency, I attended a world-wide church broadcast for priesthood leaders. The church leaders taught us that we needed to find balance between church service and family time. They expressed sympathy for the demands that church service placed on us and gave us general guidelines on how much time each calling should require of us. This broadcast brought me peace of mind: they agreed that we need to set boundaries to preserve balance.

The Elders Quorum President at the time had a young son himself, but often left his home to serve in his church calling. I know that this was hard for his wife, but they were conscientious people and did what they thought was best. I wished he wouldn’t, but I knew that the President would pick up the slack when I refused some church service. I wished he would delegate and allow someone else to take care of things more often. Instead, he took a the-buck-stops-here stance. I could admire that in a way, but I thought he lacked balance between family and church life. If he spent more time with his family, I would have felt less guilty about prioritizing my family, but he had his own choices to make, and I had mine.

We entered the Stake President’s office dressed in our Sunday clothes with our little one in tow. The Elders Quorum President had moved away, and the Stake President had asked us to meet with him. We sat down in his wood-panel office and made small talk for a few minutes. Getting serious, he called me to serve as Elders Quorum President and asked if my wife would support me in serving.

With the example of the previous Elders Quorum President in mind, I told him that I would serve in the calling but that I had some concerns about the amount of time it might require. I told him about Lacey’s classes, her callings, and the other demands on my time. I said that I worried that I might not have enough time to serve well, but I would do my best. Then he did something unexpected.

He thanked us for coming in, said that we did the right thing by bringing our concerns to him, and told us he would be in contact with us if he had anything further for us. I left his office a little stunned. I felt like I had just turned down a calling—very taboo. Faithful Mormons do not turn down callings. At least they shouldn’t. I sat with my wife and daughter in the car for a long time. We talked about going back to his office and telling the Stake President that we took it all back: we new that I could serve faithfully in the calling. We eventually decided to leave it in this inspired hands. I started the car, and we left for our home.

The LDS church promotes itself as family centered. It has been a mixed blessing for me in that arena. I’ve focused on only one way that Mormonism has influenced my family life. What effects, good and bad, has the LDS church had on your family?

(Here’s a humorous antidote for the terminal sappiness of that commercial I just linked to, if you feel the need.)