When the high is expected to be 120, that is a great day to escape. And we did. It was Fathers' Day, the day David forfeited all rights and privileges. He did not get breakfast in bed and was served Cheezits for dinner because he asked me to give a talk that day...and because I wasn't organized enough to do it all and prepare a talk and pack for the trip and teach Sunday School and install a new garage motor and sensors.
We just got back from Lake Powell and it was awesome, but while I go through the pics, I'm first going to post the talk I gave for Fathers' Day. I don't expect anyone but my adult children to read it.
This is basically it, although I did do a little editing on the hard copy and added a few moonier tidbits.
Fathers
Loren C Dunn gave a talk at BYU in 1982 and told this story:
There is a little farm on the edge of Tooele where my father was born. It was on this farm, when we were teenagers, that my father decided my brother and I needed to learn how to work. We had some great experiences on the farm, my teenage brother and I, unsupervised. We built a little reservoir on the farm. We had some fruit trees and a lot of lucern, a lot of hay. We had a number of cows that we were milking. We grew some corn; we grew a little wheat. We had a number of things on that farm. We weren’t the best farmers in the world. We were doing the best we could, but we were not the best farmers. We were surrounded by other farms, and those farms were being farmed by people who knew what they were doing. One day one of the neighbors came to my father. He was a farmer, and he had a whole list of the things that my brother and I were doing wrong. I think I could have added more things to that list than he had. Anyway, he went down the list as he was talking to my father, my father sat back and then he said, “Jim, you don’t understand. You see, I’m raising boys, not cows.”
What an important phrase that is. I’m raising boys, not cows. We can replace the word “cows” with just about anything and the import remains: Raising boys and girls is more important than raising just about anything: wealth, businesses, a house, assets of any kind, social prowess, entertainment. What consumes our thought, worries, time? The answers to this question is a good indicator of what we are raising and cultivating in our lives.
What are we raising?
Science has proven over and over the importance of fathers in the healthy development of children. Children from fatherless families have increased risk of suicide, running away, behavioral disorders, displaced anger, school dropout, chemical abuse, and institutionalization. Interesting enough, some of these risks in children remain present in adult men when they aren’t active caregivers, proving that both being fathered and being a father are immensely important roles in everyone’s life.
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The truths in the following quote instructs what constitutes a good father, which may bout be accepted by everyone.
“The most important exercise of the priesthood takes place in the family. Each husband and father in the Church should strive to be worthy to hold the Melchizedek Priesthood. With his wife as an equal partner, he presides in righteousness and love, serving as the family’s spiritual leader. He leads the family in regular prayer, scripture study, and family home evening. He works with his wife to teach the children and help them prepare to receive the ordinances of salvation (see D&C 68:25–28). He gives priesthood blessings for direction, healing, and comfort.”
Even if we aren’t skeptical of the importance of a father and priesthood holder, that doesn’t make those guidelines easy to follow. In fact, sometimes it can seem like a Herculean effort just to get everyone kneeling in the same room for family prayer. And keeping potty humor out of FHE sometimes requires a modern day miracle {cough, cough}…but I wouldn’t know anything about that.
The father has always been the protector of the family. While that used to mean wielding a gun and shuttering the windows, as Theodore Tuttle said, “Today the task is more complex. Barred doors and windows protect only against the intrusion of a corporeal creature. It is not an easy thing to protect one’s family against intrusions of evil into the minds and spirits of family members. These influences can and do flow freely into the home. Satan can subtly beguile the children of men in many ways. He need not break down the door.”
Keep in mind, this quote is from 43 years ago. Think of all the additional ways Satan can subtly enter our home that have been developed in the past half century.
I want to propose 3 ways fathers can shut their families’ spiritual windows and doors against Satan.
1) The first was given in the same talk. Brother Tuttle said, “Fathers, you will have to live close to the Lord. Develop a sensitivity to the impressions of the Spirit.”
2) Second is one of my favorite quotes by Elder Uchdorf: “In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time.”
3) Third is from this past General Conference Elder D. Todd Christofferson said,
“Perhaps the most essential of a father’s work is to turn the hearts of his children to their Heavenly Father. If by his example as well as his words a father can demonstrate what fidelity to God looks like in day-to-day living, that father will have given his children the key to peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come. A father who reads scripture to and with his children acquaints them with the voice of the Lord.”
Now, not everyone has had a positive or present father. But just like with many things in our lives, sometimes it is the seemingly unpresent and the unseen that can have the most impact on us.
That’s why I want to talk about our Unseen Fathers. We live in a world where science tells us that evidence and truth must be physical, visible, testable, repeatable. Yet some of the most powerful paternal influences aren’t physically available. I am almost sure this worldly definition of truth is partly why there is so much confusion in the world. Our paternity is such a part of who we are, but when that part is missing or not understood, when we don’t know where we come from nor whose shoulders we stand on, how can we know who we are now and who we should become?
I will talk about 3 types of unseen fathers in our lives. These 3 groups are fathers that everyone in the world should have access to regardless of who they are.
I will begin with our Heavenly Father.
Thoedore Tutle stated: “It should have great meaning that of all the titles of respect and honor and admiration that could be given him, that God himself, he who is the highest of all, chose to be addressed simply as “Father.””
Our perfectly omniscient Father, has placed us, His seed in the most fertile ground possible for our growth. He has sent us to the earth knowing that He has sent us to a spiritual feast, the only feast abundant enough, with the perfect ratio of Heavenly resources to terrestrial experiences to propel us not only to His presence, but maybe even approaching His stature.
Our personalized mortal feast may not seem like a Thanksgiving dinner, but a rocky, Arizonan drought. But despite the 120 degree weather that scorches our eyebrows and burns our skin, maybe He placed us here knowing this is where eventually we would blossom most beautifully. This week I have noticed in our yard that on top of a barrel cactus that is surrounded by rocks and never received by shadow, there have bloomed beautifully deep red flowers. The top us buzzing with bees that are attracted to the beautiful color and smell, looking for their next feast. And I thought, “I can do that too.”
Although we are weak and possibly scorched, we can do it with the divine aid of our Father.
Elder Uchtdorf said, “Why would anyone walk through life satisfied with the light from the candle of their own understanding when, by reaching out to our Heavenly Father, they could experience the bright sun of spiritual knowledge that would expand their minds with wisdom and fill their souls with joy?”
The second set of Fathers I want to talk about are our Spiritual forefathers. Although they may not be our literal ancestors, the men who wrote the scriptures were the mouthpieces of our Heavenly Father and therefore in a sense, fathers of our spiritual progression. Their words, though ancient in date are a continual line of celestial communication. We can analyze their prayers, war strategies, family relationships, government, attitudes, missionary work, adventures…the list goes on and learning from these stories we can develop our own prayers, family relationships, attitudes, strategies, and missionary work.
The scriptures teach us time and time again of the importance of fathers. We can see this in even the most mundane of verses in all of the works of scriptures: the verses that say, “so-and-so begat so-and-so…” and on and on for many verses that most people skip. Although these verses may not be important to us, they were very important to them. This was one of the main functions of keeping records—knowing who proceeded them, who they belonged to. Take Lehi’s family for example. They left everything behind that had formerly identified them: their home, riches, neighbors, possibly extended family, and were about to embark on an unknown journey. Not even 50 verses into the BoM, Lehi told his sons (a couple of them who were quite rebelious) that they would have to risk their lives by returning to Jerusalem to get the plates of Laban. The initial reason he gave wasn’t because the plates taught the gospel, nor would retain their language, although these were important too, he said in 1 Nephi 3:3 “For behold, Laban hath the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers.” The scriptures identified them, who they were, and therefore what standard they had to maintain.
These sacred scriptures were then usually handed from father to son, meaning that fathers had to be exceptional, teaching their children the value of the records and record-keeping.
The list of the stories of the great fathers in the scriptures is extensive.
One of the most touching stories of fatherhood in the Book of Mormon is not about a biological father at all. Helaman was a great surrogate father to the two thousand Ammonite warriors. These young men agreed to go to battle if Helaman would lead them. We can only guess at the love and respect they had for him.
In a letter to Moroni, Helaman told of a discussion he had with these stripling warriors before their first battle: “For as I had ever called them my sons (for they were all of them very young) even so they said unto me: Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; …
“And they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives” (Alma 56:46–47).
(From a Latter-day Father’s Guidebook, Ensign 1995)
The last group of unseen fathers that I want to talk about are our
forefathers.
This past Memorial Day, I gathered with my extended family and Greenwood Cemetery in Phoenix. This is a tradition they have kept for 4 decades. Usually family members speak to us with conviction and testimony about the gospel, our forefathers, and a great uncle who died while serving in the military.
This year, before the traditional meeting, my great-uncle Brad gathered 20-30 of the children there around the grave of their great great great grandfather and told these young children about the life of their great great grandfather. And then Uncle Brad told them that he, himself would join those in the ground soon enough and the future would be in the hands of the kids.
To me, that seemed like such a big burden to place in the hands of these small children. But as we began our meeting area and listened to our family members talk about our forefathers and the faith they had to cross oceans in the name of faith, fight wars in hope of peace, and serve missions to disperse truth in far-off places, I realized that although the burden of the future rested in little hands, at the same time there were generations of faith and righteous tradition that lead the way.
I felt connected to those who lay beneath my feet and honored to carry on their faithful tradition.
The grave we stood by was that of my great great grandfather, David Udall.
His first son, David King Udall, who was my great grandfather said of him,
“Many other fathers have been more successful financially, but as I view the picture of his life, no man could have been more industrious, frugal and honest than was my dear father. I sense keenly and gratefully that my father’s courage in accepting and living the restored Gospel is the very foundation of my own family life. May God’s blessings be over us and help us to be valiant in the cause of the Master whom He loved so much.”
The foundation of faith that his father laid for him helped him progress and make good decisions in his life when they definitely weren’t easy.
In his own life, David King was called on a mission just a month after he was married. He and his young bride, Ella, wept together as they opened and read that letter. At first they assumed the letter had been directed to his father , who had the same name. But after being assured that there was no mistake in the call, they began to prepare. “money was scarce; I only had a few weeks to earn and borrow the money to support my mission.
He recorded, “One night before I left SLC for my mission, I walked to the Temple Block and climbed on top of the unfinished Temple walls where I knelt down in the moonlight and poured out my heart in prayer to my Heavenly Father. I promised Him that is He would assist me in fulfilling and honorable mission and would bless and care to dear Ella in my absence, I, in exchange would dedicate the rest of my life to His service. I prayed that He tours bless me with children. In turn I covenanted to do all in my power to rear them to love and serve Him. As I look back over the long years, I am sure that me entire life has been influenced by that solemn promise that I made to my Creator. How richly He has blessed me and mine in return.”
God kept up His end and so did David King. He served a faithful mission and went on to become the first temple president of the Mesa, Arizona temple.
I am grateful for all of the paternal influences in my life. For my husband who is the most wonderful father to our children, for my father who has taught me the value of hard work, losing self to service, curiosity, and compassion.
I am especially grateful to the Father of my Salvation, my Savior. In Luke 17 it says Christ healed the 10 lepers AS THEY WENT. He didn’t heal them as they sat nor as they hung out. He heals us as we actively show that our belief is in fact faith, or maybe even as our belief becomes faith. How important it is for us to follow the example of the 1 leper who turned back and gave thanks. Let us acknowledge His hand more than 10% of the time.
As we seek that connection to seen and unseen paternal forces on our lives, we will Grow Boys, not Cows, or in other words, we will reap rich family relationships.
