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Maintaining Healthy Familial Relationships


Feeling united in this life can seem like a daunting task even for those that appear to others to be in healthy, stable relationships. We have seen the separation that even our own, democratic society has currently and the unhealthy and disappointing divide it has caused since being created. President Eyring could not have explained it better when he stated the following:

“All of us have felt something of both union and separation. Sometimes in families and perhaps in other settings we have glimpsed life when one person put the interests of another above his or her own, in love and with sacrifice. And all of us know something of the sadness and loneliness of being separate and alone. We
don’t need to be told which we should choose. We know. But we need hope that we can experience unity in this life and qualify to have it forever in the world to come. And we need to know how that great blessing will come so that we can know what we must do.”

Having healthy, societal relationships is essential to living a happy life, but even more importantly than that is having and maintaining a healthy relationship with those in our families. Family relationships can appear to be the most difficult ones to healthily maintain. They are family, so it is expected that they will be the closest relationships that you have, but they are often ones that can be the most easily and destructively tampered with if allowed. You expect the most and the best out of those that are in your family (and vice versa), so if and when a family member ever does something to hinder that relationship, it stings more. Regardless of what has occurred, it is our job as saints to use the gift of the Atonement and forgiveness to allow these negative feelings to pass without letting them keep a hold of our hearts. President Eyring gave great advice when he said,

“Where people have that Spirit with them, we may expect harmony. The Spirit puts the testimony of truth in our hearts, which unifies those who share that testimony. The Spirit of God never generates contention.”

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