I once showed a picture of my brother’s family to a friend at work: happy couple, three beautiful children, adorable outfits, all smiles. The reaction was, “OK, they’re perfect. I guess that’s what all Mormon families are like, huh?”
From the outside, it might appear that in order to be Mormon, you need to have a “perfect” family. At times even from the inside some of us may feel like that. But the truth is, Mormonism is not about having perfect families. It’s about FAMILIES — who are striving to be a little more perfect.
Don’t believe me? Fine then, I’ll prove it!
As Mormons, we treasure the stories told in the scriptures, and nearly every famous scriptural story centers on families. And like all good Disney movies, the presence of “perfect” family stories is virtually zero. Here is a simpler-than-cliff’s-notes recap on a few of them:
Adam and Eve’s Family:
hey start out as companions in paradise. They live in a beautiful place, they have everything they need, they are naked and they have no clue. Then they partake of the fruit from the tree of knowledge and suddenly are launched into a world where pain, sickness, and evil abound. Their lives go from beautifully simple to terribly complicated, and they must navigate through a new world together.