fathers

My dad is my absolute favorite person in the world. I love him so much and truly consider him my hero. He is the most patient, loving, and caring person I know. He is a hard worker and has sacrificed so much to care for our family. There is a story about my dad which will be a story I share with my kids and my grand kids to be sure that he is honored for the incredible sacrifice he made. To start off my "talk" about fathers I would like to share the story. 

My dad first started his professional life as a business man. He graduated with his Masters in Business and was very successful. He was with a couple different companies who loved him. He even spent some time in England. He ended up with a company that turned out to have some honesty issues. At one point his boss asked him to lie in order to succeed in a specific area he was working in. He would not lie. So with 2 young kids and a wife in a newly built home, he chose to lose his job in order to keep his integrity in tact. I can not imagine how hard that decision was for him to  make. I am sure he felt so much pressure to fulfill his role as father, husband, provider, presider. At this point he knew he needed to do something to provide for his family. He prayed and discussed with my mom what they should do. The answer came and it was determined that he needed to go back to school and become a pharmacist. I don't remember a ton of things about this time since I was so young. However, I do know and remember that he was with us and spent time with our family during this time. When I think back on all of the things he was doing at that time, I have no idea how that was feasible! He woke up at 5 am to study and studied all day. He then would work from 10 pm-3 am cleaning a hotel to be able to earn money to put food on the table. He ran on 2 hours of sleep for 4 years, graduated and immediately had a perfect job. He sacrificed his sleep, his time, his brain, EVERYTHING for me and my family. He perfectly exemplified what it truly means to provide and preside over our family. He is the perfect dad. 

Fathers are so important. They make such a big difference in our lives. Research show that 63% of suicides in children are children who lived in fatherless homes. 70% of juveniles are from fatherless homes, 75% of substance abusers in facilities are from fatherless homes, children from low-income 2 parent households do better in school in comparison to high-income single mother homes. Having a father is a big deal. They security and love they provide for a family makes a huge difference. 

In a talk by Elder D. Todd Christofferson called "Fathers" he said the following, “Today, American society is fundamentally divided and ambivalent about the fatherhood idea. Some people do not even remember it. Others are offended by it. Others, including more than a few family scholars, neglect it or disdain it." This is a very important point because we need to recognize that the "norm" in the world today regarding fathers is negative. But we can also recognize that that is not true. "We believe in “the ideal of the man who puts his family first.”² We believe that “by divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.” As a society we should be trying to create good fathers, not acting out against them and degrading them. 

Another point Elder D. Todd Christofferson made was that the most essential work of a father is to turn their children's hearts to their Father in Heaven. If we do not have a good father in the home attempting to do that then how would we trust that there is really a Heavenly Father there and understand how much he love us? It can be very difficult and to reference back to the statistics I mentioned before, it clearly creates some serious problems for us on top of that. Lastly, there is a large quote that is too good not to quote it all. "Providing for one’s family, although it generally requires time away from the family, is not inconsistent with fatherhood—it is the essence of being a good father. “Work and family are overlapping domains.”¹⁷ This, of course, does not justify a man who neglects his family for his career or, at the other extreme, one who will not exert himself and is content to shift his responsibility to others. In the words of King Benjamin:“Ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another. …
“But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.” This should serve as a testimony to everyone. Men are not solely meant to work away from the home to earn money. They are worth so much more than that and can do so much more good than that. We should not label them as only the bread winner because if we do we are limiting them from providing us with so much more. A fathers work within the home is even more important that any amount of money he makes away from the home at work. We should not put a dollar amount on a man and have that mean he is a successful father. 

Classmates blogs: https://kenziefer.blogspot.com/2019/05/other-links.html
Talk referenced: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2016/04/fathers?lang=eng