Working & Laughing As Families

You may have heard the saying, "The family that prays together, stays together." In many cases that is probably true. But it could also be said, "The family that works together, laughs together, reads together, stands together, loves together, and plays together, stays together." Solid stable families take work! If we do not help our children learn to work, we fail them. I can think of few things more difficult, yet more rewarding than working and laughing beside my children and other family members.

So many families are in crisis today that many wonder if families are worth all the work, pain, frustration, and time needed to help them succeed and to help individual family members be as good as they can be. Whether we have a traditional family, a single parent family, or a family of just one or two members, it's okay to be as good as we can be. Happiness in any family structure or size is most likely to be achieved when familial relationships are founded on faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love compassion, charity, humility, mercy, pureness of heart, work, and wholesome recreational activities.

Familial happiness takes work, but work is the business of life. By helping our children internalize this concept, we make major strides toward helping them succeed in every area of their lives. The following passage illustrates this point beautifully:

"There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young men and women who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a permanently young and handsome husband come home to a perpetually young and ravishing wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed...

"Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting hat he has been robbed.

"Most putts don't drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise...

"Life is like an old-time rail journey--delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.

"The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride (Lloyd Jones Jenkins, "Big Rock Candy Mountains).

How are you doing in navigating the stormy waters of life? Are you able to keep your head above water long enough to teach your children how to succeed when life is unfair and difficult? If you feel you are just barely staying afloat, don't quit trying. As you move forward and strive to apply correct principles and values, eventually everything will fall into place or fall out of your life.

A saying goes like this: "You can only peddle fresh fish." Are we keeping our lessons and our families alive and fresh by laughing together, working together, trying new things together, going places together, setting goals together, learning about finances together, taking walks together, riding bicycles together, going on vacations together, talking together?

As we take on the role of training and preparing children for the struggles of a harsh, unforgiving world, we must not tire of doing our best to help them be as good as they can be.

jack r. christianson