Spiritual Leadership

Tiffany has requested that the church records of our children be moved with her records into her new ward congregation. I have denied this request already twice. I expect to continue to deny this request and hear are the reasons:

I have been the spiritual leader in our house our whole marriage. I was the one encouraging us to read and discuss scriptures together while we were dating. After we were married, I continued to encourage us to read together. This started to slowly slip as I felt I was the only one who cared and didn't feel support from Tiffany. In recent years, it was pretty infrequent to study together. We used to go to the temple together very frequently before we moved to Georgia and that started to slip as well especially after we moved back to Texas.

Specifically with the children, it was my initiative to start scripture study in our house with each child. I introduced Nate to the scriptures. I encourage him daily to read. I introduced Lily to the scriptures and I was the one trying to think of creative ways to interest her in them. I introduced Matthew to the scriptures. I started each of them off by having them repeat after me. If I knew that they would be asleep or to tired before we got home, I would recite scriptures from memory and have the repeat after me, either individually or as a group. They are becoming familiar with the old language of the scriptures. I would often let them interrupt with questions, as long as they were related to what we were reading, and answer them. Often times this was Lily asking what a certain word or phrase meant. Tiffany did support me in this most of the time but was never that strong into it. She looked for ways to do the shortest scripture readings or instead of reading scriptures, watch short scripture videos instead; fortunately, not as bad a skipping it altogether. I was the one who insisted that scripture reading was more important than story time. If the kids gave push back or started whining Tiffany was the one that tried encouraging me to just skip it.

I have consistently tried to instill a strong commitment to the importance of going to church. I made sure they were dressed well. I made sure they didn't bring noisy toys into church or any, when they were old enough. I encouraged them to focus on Jesus during the different meetings. I was the one finding excuses to go to church not excuses not to go. In several of these, I did not feel Tiffany's support or I felt a grudging support. When one of our children was too sick to go to church or Tiffany felt they shouldn't go and it was my turn to stay home with them, I would sing hymns and children songs with them and have a mini church service or similar lessons with them which was not something Tiffany did with them.

When I felt like I was a slacker at instituting or being consistent with family home evening, I instituted Sunday morning scripture story time. As long as there was enough time, I would read stories to them for an hour. Some were from various children's bible story books. Sometimes I would let the children choose the story or the topic. Sometimes I would recount a story in my own words. Sometimes I felt like it was important to read the stories directly from the scriptures. Sometimes I would let them draw details from the stories. Sometimes I would think of ways to act out the stories. I sometimes invited Tiffany to join us, but a large majority of the time she would just sleep on the couch in the other room and reject invitations to join.

Not thinking Sunday morning scripture story time was enough, I wanted to start doing an official family home evening where the children would teach each other lessons and stories from the scriptures. This would also include hymns or children songs as well as prayers. I felt partially supported in this, in that when I suggested it to Tiffany, she thought it would be a good idea; but in the short time we did it before Tiffany left, she was the only one trying to find excuses not to do it or was reluctant to help the children either prepare the lesson or choose songs.

In trying to persuade the children to have a personal relationship with God, I would have each of them pray as best as they could. That too started with them repeating after me or Tiffany. Sometimes I insisted on it; this bothered Tiffany. Often, I would get home from work and in deciding who should pray for dinner I would inquire who prayed for breakfast or lunch and often I would hear, "we forgot," or "no one." Tiffany was pretty good at making sure we did bedtime family prayers.