When church members open their Come Follow Me family lesson manuals each week, all families are taught to follow the guidance of the Spirit and cater to their individual family situations. While most family lessons on average probably deliver the same spiritual lesson, there is DEFINITELY a unique, challenging twist to the lessons in an interfaith family like ours. I don't think there are quite as many people with the bumper sticker badge of Mom belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Dad, who's not a fan of labels, but if he had to be categorized, would probably go with Athiest/Religious Resister.
I REALLY wanted to share this post to help others see that you CAN respectfully merge two different worlds together and bring your family closer to each other and to their own spirituality.
Today we talked about our heart compasses.
I first gathered a few of the kid's stuffed animals and we discussed times in nature where animals have to trust their instincts. We mentioned how salmon always know to swim upstream, how birds and whales and butterflies migrate in the seasons, and how baby sea turtles hatch from their eggs and go straight to the ocean without anyone there to guide them.
We then talked about how our "spiritual instincts" work the same way and how inside of each of us, we are magnetically drawn to those BIG questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? What happens after I die?
I love the episode of BLUEY where Bluey asks her dad where she came from before she was born. He very vulnerably and honestly answers her, "I don't know, Kid. That's something you get to figure out for yourself."
And ultimately, aren't we all agents unto ourselves? No one can live our lives for us and every person's spiritual journey will be personal and different.
We then talked about how we all have access in our lives to different places that can bring us closer to light and truth. And how it is up to US to listen to our hearts and learn for ourselves what is true and what is important.
We have times when we can feel a warmth in our hearts and trust it
We have the people around us (who are all listening to their own personal heart compasses) that we can choose to learn from: our parents, our relatives, our friends, our teachers, our leaders, prophets, heroes, strangers
We have things we can read: books, articles, journals, scriptures, magazines, words of others who have already passed on
We have churches and religion, or for my hubby, a good, long hike in nature to remind him how rare and beautiful this life is and his place in it
And my personal favorite... we can look to the stars. Nothing rattles my heart-compass and magnetically draws me closer to my spiritual instincts than gazing up at the night sky and feeling love showered back down from something bigger than me. It's a love that I personally feel comes from my loving Heavenly Parents, and I'm pretty sure most people, at some point in their lives, have felt some acknowledgement from the universe and their importance in it.
One thing I have grown to love about the uniqueness of our family is how my children have the opportunity to grow up "spiritually bilingual". I'm so grateful for the empathy they'll be able to have for others as they see everyone learn and grow spiritually in different ways.
Please, please know that you don't have to fit the cookie-cutter mould. I have always loved Christ's parable of the servants and the talents. We are all given a different number of talents and we take what we have and make the best of it. If your family home evening lessons look way different from others around you, you can rock your version and your circumstances. You are beautiful exactly how you are. ❤️
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