Tim Frodsham 6 June 2020
In a family working a lifetime to develop relationships, sometimes the perfect Family “Home” Evenings happen, not when everything goes right, but when everything goes wrong.
“I know it is pandemonium in this delivery room. Your mother is facing every woman’s fear—the possibility that she will be asked to give her own life bringing a child into the world. I assure you, my precious daughter, that everyone here has a purpose and all are working to save the life of your mother. While we wait, and let these capable people do their job, let me tell you about the family you have just joined, even if the telling is more thoughts than words. You have a sister, Chantelle, two years old and filled with the zest for life. She loves exploring closets and cupboards and peeking out from once neatly folded piles of laundry. Your mother, LaNae, the love of my life and a bastion of faith, had just welcomed you into this world when everything went South. The nurses handed you to me, and we are forgotten for the moment. The last member of the family you have just joined is me, your father. Yes, my hair is tousled, and the bags under my eyes are as much from watching over your mother as she labored to bring you into the world as from months of graduate studies and second jobs and homework and exams.”
“Whether or not your mother survives, we have been sealed in the temple, and that bond will permeate your childhood. We are committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and consider it a sacred responsibility to share that gospel with you. As I gaze into your unfocused eyes, I read in turn, nobility, charity, a pure love of Christ, and a deep concern for others. I commit to you right now, to always include you in my life, in work and play around the house, especially when you are young. If you are not welcome around me as a babe and a toddler, why would you be comfortable sharing your life with me as you mature and your interests broaden?”
My companion survived that day, and my daughters were joined by four more siblings. As years passed, whether fixing a furnace, mending a dishwasher, replacing a sprinkler line, weeding the garden, or simply tightening that loose knob on the chest of drawers, I remembered the commitment that I made the day my daughter was born, and it was rare not to have one or two toddlers at my side, probing with their screw drivers or filling trenches with their toy shovels as fast as I could dig them out. Later in their lives, I usually had a daughter or son under the car with me, fishing the fill plug out of a pan of dirty oil, or coaxing off the old oil filter and replacing it with a new one.
As we worked to tune cars and paint houses—preventive maintenance that would head off later and more serious problems—we were also doing preventive maintenance on our family: building bonds, instilling wisdom, and strengthening testimonies that would mold future happiness and avert personal and family disaster. Tasks were delayed, some were never completed, and most lacked the polish and detail I would like to have seen, but compared to the bonding that occurred between father and child, that time was never wasted.
As my children’s lives expanded, work with dad included help with their own tasks: homework and scout projects, hobbies and boy troubles, or simple evening walks. By making the effort to include them from the time they could toddle up, wrench in hand, to “help” daddy with his tasks, they have been willing and even eager to include me in their own expanding spheres. They have also been quick to forgive as well for those times when I have been far from perfect in living up to my long-standing commitment and have demonstrated the frailties of fatigue and impatience that seem to follow all who raise a family.
Antifreeze is leaking onto the power steering belt of the family van, making it difficult and even dangerous to drive. Late getting home from work, I barely have time to make the repairs, and there will be no family home evening tonight. I promised my wife that I would fix her car. Slipping on my work clothes, I rummage about for my toolbox and climb onto the front seat. As luck would have it, the camel “hump” or cowling on a full sized van can be removed, allowing work on the engine while sitting inside the vehicle—perfect for repairs during that single Oregon winter rainstorm that starts up mid-October, develops a real personality by January, and finally gives up out of sheer boredom around April or May.
I have just removed the cowling, exposing the tangle of wires and hoses covering the top of the engine when my two-year-old son, Jacob, peeks through the car window. He had seen me slip out of the house and toddled out to investigate. Pulling him into the van and wiping the rain from his face and bare feet, he soon sits down beside me, comfortably wrapped in a thick wool blanket and assumes his accustomed duty as flashlight monitor, probing the beam into every nook and cranny of the van, pausing for the occasional flash or two across the engine just to humor dad.
I had removed the air cleaner housing and was peering through a growth of ignition wires when Melissa darts out of the house and climbs onto the seat behind me. She is taking a difficult high school calculus class and is desperate for some help with homework. The conversation bounces from, “How was school today?” to, “That’s right, with Newton’s method, you use the function divided by its derivative.” To, “Please pass me that half-inch wrench and a small screwdriver.”
We are well into the second iteration of Newton’s method and safely through the mass of spark plug wires when Melissa slides over to make room for my wife, LaNae, who came out to check on my progress and find her vanished son. The three of us are soon deep in conversation. I had just located a telltale pool of antifreeze on the engine block when the flashlight stops its random passes over the engine. Jacob is squealing with delight, shining the flashlight outside as my oldest son bobs about, teasing him from window to window. Tyson, tiring of the rain, climbs into the van with us and the conversation widens to include his latest basketball games. While I’m locating a weakened hose clamp and figuring out how to replace it, Elise and Trevor, driven out by the “silence” that was rapidly filling the house, wander out to the van and take their accustomed seats in the back. As I fumble with a difficult to reach hose, I am impeded only slightly when the van rocks and rolls under the influence of my rambunctious teenagers.
By the time I complete the repairs, Newton’s method is conquered, English essays are corrected, and the van is filled with stories and songs. Backing my way out of the engine, connecting hoses and wires as I go, I slow my work, even looking for something else to fix in order to prolong the spirit of love and family that fill the swaying vehicle. It occurs to me then that this moment didn’t just happen. It is the results of years of prayer, work, love and honoring the commitment I made to my daughter years ago. The leak is fixed, wires are replaced, and it is time to put the cowling back on the engine. The spirit and magic that fills the van fades as the family drifts, one-by-one, back into the house.
Frankly, in the frenzied schedule of a family with teenagers, on many occasions the only part of Family Home Evening that actually happened was the evening. However, even in those worst of home evenings I later discovered that my children learned far more than I would have suspected, feeling His spirit individually, even though it was chaos collectively. As long as we make the effort as parents to nurture our children and include them in our lives, the Lord will create learning experiences when we least expect them. As long as we keep putting our best effort forward to strengthen and nurture our family, however feeble and incomplete and inexperienced those best efforts may be, the Lord fills in the details and smooths the gaps with the infinite care and expertise of the master craftsman He is.
Copyright Tim Frodsham, latterdaysaints.life, 2020
Latter-Day Saints 