THE PERFECT FAMILY . . .

I was talking to a friend the other day who was really upset at some criticism that had been leveled at her family. This friend is a good, conscientious mom who loves her grown children dearly, even through their struggles and trials, and what was said to her HURT. It is always hurtful to be criticized (or even feel like you are being criticized silently) by people that you admire and respect. She cried as she told me that finally she said, "Well, I am sorry that my family isn't perfect like yours is" . . . and I interrupted her to say, "But it IS. You DO have a perfect family . . . perfectly NORMAL . . . "


Since then, I have been thinking about her experience . . . and pondering just what does make a 'perfect' family . . . and the answer is, I have no clue.


Nope . . . no clue at all . . .


The family I grew up in was not a perfect family, though there was much good in it . . .


My own family has not been perfect either. Oh, I TRIED . . . I WANTED a perfect family . . . I wanted to be a good, patient, serene, insightful mother that instinctively knew how to solve all her children's problems and just how to approach each one so that they could grow physically and mentally and emotionally and spiritually healthy and strong . . .


But I am well aware that just because I LOVED my children with all my heart . . . and tried my best to to respect and value them is no guarantee that that is what they FELT from me. It is perfectly possible to love people and have that not be the message that they pick up on.


I wasn't always as patient as I wish I could have been . . . sometimes life had me so frazzled that giving my best still didn't mean I had much to give these five incredible gifts that the Lord sent to my care . . .


Despite my good, heartfelt intentions and my best -- though imperfect -- efforts, we did not have a perfect family . . . though I DO think there was much in our family that was good and healthy . . .


Perhaps, when it comes right down to it, a PERFECT family doesn't even really exist . . .


Perhaps there is no such thing as perfect parents . . . or a perfect marriage . . . Just imperfect human beings who are trying to make a relationship work and build something meaningful and lasting together . . .


There is no perfect number of children . . . Some families have no children . . . some have many . . . that is a very personal decision which is between a husband and a wife and the Lord . . .


I must admit that I hope that there are aspects of our family life that our children would like to duplicate in their own families . . .


We laughed A LOT . . . We had so much of fun together . . . I have SO many precious memories of spending time together playing board games, working in the yard, reading stories, working on school projects, going on hikes, laughing together over silly things, making our own kites to fly, going to church together, reading the scriptures together . . .


I remember vividly the time we worked for a solid month to get the house SPOTLESS from top to bottom, being careful not to fight or bicker because we wanted to have a Celestial Day . . . and that meant that the process of getting there was every bit as important as the end result . . .


I remember when we inadvertently picked the six HOTTEST Saturdays to paint our house together, as a family project . . . We sweated, we fell off ladders, we swore we would NEVER do that again, finished it and stepped back to admire our handiwork and simultaneously asked ourselves "Who on EARTH picked this HIDEOUS, BRIGHT aqua color?!?!?!?" (um . . . yeah . . . it was me . . . sigh) . . . and yet from that ordeal came a very sweet sense of accomplishment. We did it TOGETHER . . . It wasn't particularly fun . . . it was ALOT of hard, hard work . . . but we did it together . . . and that was enough . . .


I will never forget the Mother's Day that I woke up and instead of having a pile of presents waiting for me to open, there was a dirty pair of gardening gloves and a trowel . . . because after I had gone to sleep the night before, my husband and children worked for several hours -- in the middle of the night -- to weed and plant flowers in our BIG flower bed out front . . . That touched my heart SO much . . .The flowers were lovely . . . but what touched my heart even more was the thought that they were willing to do that for ME . . .


Sometimes money was really tight . . . sometimes non existent . . . sometimes we had squabbles . . . sometimes we were NOT all on the same page, but through it all, I think that we genuinely enjoyed one another . . .


You know . . . there may not be any perfect families . . . perhaps our family, like my friend's . . . was and IS simply perfectly NORMAL . . . Seven (in our case) imperfect human beings with various personalities and strengths and weaknesses who tried to build something worth holding on to together . . .


I am deeply and genuinely proud of each of my children . . . and -- more than anything else -- incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have raised them and loved them and nurtured them, trying my very imperfect best to share my vision and values of what is most important in life and what I thought would bring them the greatest happiness . . .


I do not know how much they listened . . . or how much they internalized what I tried to teach them. That is out of my hands . . . but more than anything else, I hope with all my heart that they each felt loved . . . and listened to . . . and respected . . . and valued . . . and as much as I hope that there were things from our family that they would like to carry on to their own families . . . I also hope that they follow their own hearts, their own visions of what they each want for THEIR families . . .


There may not be any perfect families . . . but what makes a GOOD family is when people love each other . . . and value each other . . . and respect each other . . . and enjoy spending time together . . . and try -- with their very best efforts -- to build something worth holding on to . . . for all eternity . . .