Choosing Victory Through Family Crisis

 

Have you ever been skeptical about raising a family in this ever-darkening world? It seems that the world is drowning in family fails and unsuccess stories.  Sometimes the thought of having children and raising a family can seem very perilous.  Crises are bound to happen.  There are things like, tension between family members, marital strains, devastating pregnancy and childbearing challenges, stressful financial problems, work transitions, and death or illness of loved ones. I think Ed Sheeran puts it perfectly when he says “a heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved.”  This simple phrase addresses the fact that loving often leaves us more prone to experiencing heartbreak.  Opening our heart to children and starting a family creates great risk for heartbreak from difficult situations which are bound to happen.  I wish I could promise that if you try hard enough, your family will be crises free, but the reality is that it’s not a matter of if your family will experience crisis, but when.  With this in mind, it may seem like there is little hope for raising a happy family, but thankfully, crisis does not equal defeat.

            When families experience a crisis, there are three possible outcomes.  They will either emerge from the crisis worse off, about the same, or better off than before.  How could crisis leave a family better off?  Well, our lives are like muscles.  When we put stress on our muscles, they get little tears in them, resulting in the soreness a person feels after they work out.  When those tears heal, the muscle is actually stronger than it was before.  The little tears (crises) in the fabric of family life, like muscles, can actually be built if healed in the right way.  Learning how to deal with crisis in the right way will not only help your family survive challenges, but it will help your family thrive through them.

Before this week, I didn’t really think much about the way that I deal with difficult situations.  There are key coping mechanisms that can be very detrimental to the outcome of the crisis. Those mechanisms include things like: denial, avoidance, and blaming someone else for the crisis.  Have you ever found yourself turning to these mechanisms in a tough time?

Effective coping mechanisms largely depend on the unity of your family before crisis happens.  There are several things that you can do now to build your family unity, so when the trials come, you won’t fall.  The thing about preparation is if we procrastinate it, it will be too late when we need it.  So, in the both the good times and the bad times, you can focus on things like: celebrations, communication, good financial management, commitment to your family, emotional and physical health, shared leisure activities, shared meals and chores, and traditions to unify your family.  That unity will sustain you through a tough time, such as the death of a family member. 

Another incredibly hopeful principle about starting a family is the idea that you ALWAYS have a choice.  What I mean by this is that no matter what trials come your way, you can choose your reaction to that trial.  This can either be the most terrifying idea in the world or the most empowering idea in the world.  If this is true, it means that in the end, you get what you want.  If you want happiness, you will choose it.  I don’t think we often realize just how much we get to choose the outcome of our lives and our family situations. 

Too often, we resort to those negative coping mechanisms (such as denial, avoidance, and blaming) as a way to escape the responsibility choosing what to do in a difficult situation.  We say things like, “if only my situation were different, I would be happy,” or “if only this person would stop doing ____ (fill in the blank), life would be good.”  It is thought processes like these that give away our ability to change our circumstances.  So, what is the solution?  The solution is changing our backward thought processes.  It is our responsibility to choose our thoughts.  The way we think about our life is the only reality we have.  So, decide what you want to think of your trials and it will help your reality be more positive.  A quote that I have always loved says, “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives” (Russel M. Nelson).  If we adjust our focus, we can become the masters of our family life when difficult times come.  Those crises don’t have to control us.  We can control them.