Becoming more

 

This week I've been reflecting much on the type of wife and mother I want to be. It's impossible to do this without reflecting on my own upbringing and on my parent's relationship. I love my parents so much, but like all parents, they are not perfect. there are many things that I admire that my parents did and hope to apply to my own family. However, there are things they do that I never want to implement in my own family. Unfortunately, we as human beings tend to copy the behavior we witness. This means that we often imitate our parents’ behavior subconsciously. Especially during stressful situations, we fall back to what’s most comfortable, with fall into behavior we already know, which is our parent’s behavior. 

Even this week while I was talking with my boyfriend, I heard phrases that my mom uses when talking to my dad. I didn’t think about saying them. They just popped out of my mouth. I was stressed so I reverted to what I knew and what was familiar: my mom’s words. Honestly, this stressed me out because I felt powerless. I was in a stressful situation, and I just reacted. I want to be better than just reacting. Reacting creates problems.  

Sometimes our family’s behavior is less than ideal, but we can’t help but imitate the same behaviors. How are we supposed to become better? Are we just doomed to this endless cycle of less-than-ideal behavior? 

I think this is where the gospel of Jesus Christ comes into play. As a believer in Jesus Christ, I know that through Him, and through hard work, we can overcome our own weakness, and our weaknesses passed to us through our family. I also believe that we all can create the change that we want to see in our own lives. We don’t have to be products of our environment. Instead, we can recognize the weaknesses in our family, and overcome them. We can overcome the odds. We can overcome current trends or statistics. We can let our weaknesses make us stronger. There’s power in understanding our weaknesses. When we acknowledge them, we can overcome them. Jesus Christ has made me better than I ever thought was possible. He has already helped me overcome so many weaknesses in my life. God wants us to succeed. He and the Savior will help us. Nothing is impossible with them on our side. I know that He will help me overcome my weaknesses as a spouse and as a mother. 

If you’re anything like me, you fear a lot of things about starting a family. Seeing my parents’ weaknesses in myself is one of them. But there truly is no reason to fear this. Acknowledging that seeing our parent’s weaknesses in ourselves is something that is going to happen, and then recognizing that we are agents, and we can create our own change helps to ease that fear.