Craig H. Hart - Helping and Healing Our Families: Principles and Practices Inspired by the Family - A Proclamation to the World

First printing in hardbound 2005. First printing in paperbound 2008.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Helping and healing our families: principles and practices inspired by

The family: a proclamation to the world/edited by Craig H. Hart

... [et al.].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-10: 1-59038-485-7 (hardbound: alk. paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-60641-075-2 (paperbound)

1. FamilyReligious life. 2. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsDoctrines. I. Hart, Craig H., 1957. BX8643.F3H44 2005

248.4'89332dc22 2005015383

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedicated to President Gordon B. Hinckley Champion of the family

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editors gratefully acknowledge the exceptional professionalism and hard work of our three assisting editors: Julie Haupt, managing editor, and Hilary Hendricks and Lisa Hawkins, consulting editors. They have been central to this volume from the beginning and have contributed extraordinary judgment and wise counsel. We also thank source checkers Kirk Shaw and Emily Ellsworth, who have diligently worked to ensure the accuracy of source citations in the volume.

We express our appreciation to James Harper, director of the Brigham Young University School of Family Life, for his oversight and counsel on this project; and to Susanne Olsen, associate director of curriculum for the school, for her continued support. From the outset of the first volume, Strengthening Our Families: An In-Depth Look at the Proclamation on the Family, Alan Hawkins encouraged the creation of these resources for families. Without his work and vision, this volume might never have come to be. We express thanks to LaRita Johnson and the secretarial staff of the School of Family Life for their valuable assistance.

At the beginning of this project, many focus group participantsincluding parents, BYU faculty teaching the Family Life 100 course, local priesthood leaders from various parts of the United States, ward Relief Society presidents, and friendsprovided input that guided our selection of topics to be covered in this volume. We gratefully acknowledge their wisdom, experience, and suggestions, which contributed to our decision to organize the book into short chapters and essays covering a wide breadth of topics.

We appreciate those at Deseret Book who have brought this volume to fruition, including Chris Schoebinger (product director), Jay Parry (editor), Lisa Mangum (editorial assistant), Tonya Facemyer (typographer), Richard Erickson (art director), and Ken Wzorek (designer). We also thank the many individuals who assisted us throughout the project by reading manuscripts and providing valuable feedback.

Most especially, we thank all the authors, who have volunteered countless hours of unpaid time on this project. We have been impressed by their insights and expertise, touched by their sincerity and worthy desires to help families, and grateful for their consecrated efforts. Royalties from the sale of Helping and Healing Our Families will be donated to the BYU School of Family Life to support teaching, scholarship, and outreach.

Finally, we express profound appreciation to our spouses and children for their support, their encouragement, and their love, which keep us striving to help and heal families.

PREFACE

Family life holds the promise for our greatest happiness in this life and the next. While family life includes much joy, it also involves discovering, solving, and working through the problems of everyday living. Many families face daunting challenges arising from divorce, single parenting, mental illness, long-term health problems and physical disabilities, death, marital and parentchild conflict, wayward children, and children with special needsto name a few. The purpose of this volume is to provide hope, principles, practices, and eternal perspectives in addressing these issues.

This volume is based upon prophetic principles of marriage and family life, particularly doctrines taught in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. With this volume, we celebrate proclamation principles and the blueprint they provide for success in family life.

In 2000, Strengthening Our Families: An In-Depth Look at the Proclamation on the Family was published, edited by David C. Dollahite from the School of Family Life at BYU. This seminal volume demonstrated that proclamation principles are well supported by conceptual and empirical scholarship. A primary objective in this second, companion volume is to provide concrete ideas and real-world examples to assist couples and families.

Three years of preparation, discussion, and careful planning by the editorial board, along with the efforts of talented authors (each with considerable expertise and experience in the designated topic area), have combined to produce this work. The eighty-four chapters and essays contained herein provide a rich variety of topics to help and heal families. Chapters incorporate prophetic statements and scholarly research; essays primarily focus on personal experiences of Latter-day Saints. To achieve this breadth, the chapters and essays are necessarily short. However, most list additional reading, cross references, or other resources that can provide further help. (Articles from the Ensign can be read and printed, free of charge, at www.lds.org.)

As the insights, experiences, and testimonies of Latter-day Saints are shared in this book, we hope readers will be reminded of God's love for each individual, and of His great plan of happiness for marriages and families. We hope you will gain inspiration for your own circumstances as the principles of successful family life are explicated. President Ezra Taft Benson explained how principles might be translated into action:

Usually the Lord gives us the overall objectives to be accomplished and some guidelines to follow, but he expects us to work out most of the details and methods. The methods and procedures are usually developed through study and prayer and by living so that we can obtain and follow the promptings of the Spirit.

Additionally, as you read about challenges you have not personally confronted, we hope this volume can help you to grow in empathy and become better equipped to help others who struggle or have become discouraged. While the practical suggestions for strengthening families apply most directly to families in North America, the doctrinal principles can be applied to all families. We have written with Latter-day Saint readers in mind, but we invite our friends of other faiths to consider the volume's faith-based approach to creating, sustaining, and healing family relationships.