Family is Wealth

What does family love look like? Family love looks different for everyone, but it always encompasses real things that provide love and security for the family. Christian writer Timothy J. Keller writes, “To be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.” Family love can be the closest thing to heaven on earth, keeps us safe, and eventually brings us home to God. Family life also requires effort, forgiveness, and patience over a long timeframe.

James McBride describes life in his parents’ home in his book, “The Color of Water.” They were a family of eight children in Harlem. His father was a minister and taught his mother about Jesus. When she “found Jesus,” she said, “Jesus changed her.” Jesus anchored her. She had never known love like the love she found from Jesus.

She and her husband focused their family on “church, school, and love.” When her husband died prematurely, she carried on. When her second husband also died prematurely, she suffered great depression, but still carried on. There was much love and a lot of chaos in their home.

McBride chronicles the family’s life not as a perfect life of harmony and bliss; rather, he shows his mother as a woman full of idiosyncrasies and dogged determination. In McBride’s family, there were fights, friendships, drugs, runaways, and depression. There was often not enough money and not enough food. And through it all was his parents’—and especially his mother’s--determination and love.

The children are now doctors, nurses, teachers, and journalists. The imperfection of their family life recedes into the background as the constants of love and devotion ruled the long-term outcomes. All eight children and their families gather around their mother every Christmas to be together. McBride writes, “Family love, a mother’s love, gives us grace, courage, and power beyond measure…. It is our highest calling and our greatest nobility.”

Family is wealth, says Rob Henderson. He writes about the profound effects of his unstable childhood in his book “Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class.” Abandoned by both parents by age three, he entered the foster care system. He was eventually adopted, and then his adoptive father abandoned the family. He overcame the odds, served in the military, and went to college at Yale and Cambridge. At Yale, he found that most of the students came from stable families. He, on the other hand, describes what it is like to come from a background of abandonment. He says, “Unstable environments are bad for children because the children enduring them experience pain—pain that etches itself into their brains.”

“I’ve come to understand that a warm and loving family is worth infinitely more than the money or accomplishments I hoped might compensate for them…. I’ve met some well-heeled people who have attempted to imagine what it’s like to be poor. But I’ve never met anyone who has tried to imagine what it would have been like to grow up without their family,” Henderson concludes.

I have a friend who experienced severe trauma in her childhood. When she was in her mid-forties, she told me that two people made a big difference in her life by helping her feel love. One was her babysitter after school during fifth grade. She came to this woman’s home each day after school, and this woman loved her and taught her. The second person’s love was shown just a few years prior. It was a woman from the church who dropped by every month with a small gift and note. She never met the woman from the church, but she felt her transformative love.

Have you thought about your family as your greatest source of wealth? Have you considered that you might be the “one” who can give constancy and security to a struggling child or a hurting adult?

Jesus showed us how to love our families. While Jesus hung on the cross, his final words before he “bowed his head and gave up the ghost” were to care for his mother. “Woman, behold thy son!” and then “Behold thy mother!” to the disciple who would care for Jesus’s mother throughout the rest of her life. How important is family love to Jesus? His mother was essentially his final breath—His last care, His great love. And our families should occupy the same important place in our lives and our hearts.

The ultimate family, Our Heavenly Father and His Heavenly home, is there for each of us. We can feel God’s love and always look forward to returning to his Heavenly home. “This is the good news!” teaches Patrick Kearon, an Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “The Father’s design, His plan, His purpose, His intent, His wish, and His hope are all to heal you, all to give you peace, all to bring you, and those you love, home.”

My friends, let’s tap into the love and strength of our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Let’s love our families; help a child; strengthen a parent; and give love and support wherever possible. If you have a family, embrace your wealth. And whenever you can, reach out and share your wealth.

Beth Wright loves her family and Jesus Christ. She also loves being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.