Getting married usually means doubling one’s family. And depite one’s best intentions, after a few years, one finds that yes, the in-laws actually have become one’s family. So now I have two families, to whom I’m tied with bonds of equal strength and affection. It’s a great situation for drawing conclusions about the various ways that families can be their own kind of good.
After analyzing the relative strengths and weaknesses of our families, I’ve recently realized that we have one Melchizedek family, and one Aaronic family. And I’ve also realized that we value them exactly the same, in the unique roles they play in our lives.
When I need advice about money, or buying life insurance, or a mortgage, or a sprinkler system, I ask my father in law. When we have casual babysitting needs, or want some low-key assistance with any of a whole host of little errands or tasks, we call Macy’s mom. Macy’s sisters also fill in with numerous little helpful tasks, and we try to do the same for them. Our service to each other is a day to day kind of service, focusing on the mundane and temporal. The advantage to this kind of service is its frequency– because Macy’s family relies on each other for small things, there are constant contacts, down to the daily phone calls she makes to different siblings asking them to pick up this or that item for her while they’re at this or that store (they seem to be at this or that store a lot. I just assume they must work there).
When I need a blessing, or spiritual counsel about life, or a deep chat about a newly discovered gospel principle, I dial up my family. There have been several moments in my life in which I’ve needed urgent care of this type, and even more moments when the need has been less urgent, but still deeply felt. Each time, my mom and dad, or a brother or sister have been there. My family is very well equipped to deliver prayer, fasts, and faith and wisdom for gaining miracles. While the need for this kind of service is less frequent, it has the advantage of speaking to the very deepest needs we have. Few can forget those who offer service of the spiritual kind, and when your family is doing this kind of thing routinely, it creates a special feeling between its members.
Those of you who are married may relate to the kind of vacillating between families that many go through in the early stages of marriage. At first, you both become convinced that one family’s got it right, and the other one looks weird, or lazy, or any of a million other unsavory things. Then, as you grow a little, you burn out on the peculiar gifts of your favored family, and come to see the beauty of being just like the other family. Macy and I have both bounced around like this, until, a year or two ago, we both realized that the competition was irrelevant, and that we both have extraordinary families, who love and care for us as well as anyone could.
So now I’m content to have one Melchizedek family and one Aaronic family. It would be impossible to say who renders the better service– something like comparing one’s home teachers with one’s stake president. For me, though, its another course in the same lesson I’ve been learning all my adult life– that there’s no single right way to live the gospel, and that the Lord accepts each person’s offering in the light of that person’s whole identity. And I guess that means that so should we.