This week has been a super crazy one! When life gets crazy, I start seeing little bits of my mom and dad creeping out in me. And because of these reminders of my sweet mom and dad, I have been contemplating on my own personal family that I grew up in, that I love, and that I ADORE.
This week in my classes we have been discussing a lot about family patterns and family mapping. There has been great discussion on how family patterns continue through generation to generation. When a couple gets divorced, the percentage that their children get divorced are very high. That is why we see anger and depression carry from one generation to another. As we have been having these conversations in class, not just in my family relations class, but also in all my other marriage and family classes, I have had inspired thoughts about change. We are the change. We get to be the one to change family generations for years to come if we choose to be.
Although we cannot sometimes choose what are weaknesses are and what they aren't, I do believe that if we are willing to put faith, work, diligence, and perseverance into shaping ourselves to be the change, we can. Genetics, nature, and nurture do not entirely shape who we can become. We can choose to change the pattern in our family culture. If your dad growing up was angry, depressed, and grumpy, you can CHOOSE to be happy, you can choose to smile more, and you can choose to use resources for support and help. If you had a mom who was an alcoholic, abusive, and unkind, you can choose to be kind, to love, and to keep your body clean from addictions. We may not be able to pick out what our weaknesses are, but we can decide how they shape us. We can decide if we are going to keep the same patterns we have seen, and lived in, or if we are going to educate ourselves, learn about change, and grow in faith in God.
I am not just making this up, it is real. I have seen it in my own life, and even in myself. I have had to learn, listen to the Spirit and others on how to respond with gentleness. I have had to learn how to take deep breathes. I have had to learn how to not let anxiety rule my life. I am still learning how to change these patterns that are in my family pattern from years of generations back. Instead of just allowing these things to destroy my relationships, to talk harshly to those I love, and to let anxiety steal my happiness, I am trying to learn to change. Change the pattern. Just think, if you learn to change one pattern in your family culture that may be from generations and generations back, how is that going to affect the children you have? There is power in learning, growing, and improving generations of negative family patterns. One of my professors here on campus told us that his parents were divorced when he was a young boy, and he decided from that point on that he was going to do everything in his power from having that happen in his marriage. So guess what he did? He learned everything he could about marriage, he went to school all around the USA, he has done research, and now he teaches at BYU-Idaho trying to help students have success in their family and marriage relationships. Powerful? I think so. We cannot choose what family we get, what family hardships we get, or what weaknesses we get from generations of family lines, but we do get to choose if we will change one negative pattern to be a positive pattern.
Are you going to be the change in your family? What is one thing you see in your generation line that you would like to be different? Do you want to keep a marriage strong? Do you want to have close relationships with family members? Do you want to change that bad habit of self-doubt that has been traveling from generation to generation?
It's your TURN! Find something you want to change and do it. Go to God for help. go to the scriptures for answers, go see that counselor, go to the library and start reading about anxiety, study every article about keeping a marriage together. Let us be the one to change negative generation patterns.
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