How do I balance my marriage and church callings?
Question
HI Gramps.
I have a calling in my ward as assistant scout master and it requires a lot of time and dedication. My wife however gets mad or upset if I have a meeting to go to and she wants time to spend with me. I want to accomplish the responsibilities I have, but I am only one man and I can only do so much. I want my wife to be happy, but at the same time I need to magnify my callings. Any suggestions?
Kyle
Answer
Kyle,
Callings are one of the important parts of the way the Kingdom of God is organized in our time. We are taught to accept and magnify our callings.
So are there times to turn down a calling?
Yes. There are times when we simply cannot accept a calling. For example, it would be foolish of us to take a calling that interfered with a job. It would force us to either fail at our job or fail at the calling.
Ideally, when extending callings, our leaders should have a full understanding of our situations and be able to make perfect decisions in all cases. For example, Handbook 2 states,
“Before calling a married person to an assignment that requires a significant time commitment, Church leaders consider the effect of the calling on the marriage and family.”
But being imperfect and mortal afflicts even the greatest of men. Simply put, we cannot expect that every time we get a calling that it will work out.
There is a clear hierarchy of priority when it comes to callings. Gordon B. Hinkley taught,
“Each of us has a fourfold responsibility. First, we have a responsibility to our families. Second, we have a responsibility to our employers. Third, we have a responsibility to the Lord’s work. Fourth, we have a responsibility to ourselves.”
Note that although a priority is indicated, none of these four items may be discounted as unimportant. We have a responsibility to fulfill all of them dutifully.
Though there is a time and a place, I have rarely found myself comfortable with the idea of asking to be released from a calling (or turning it down in the first place). What I am comfortable with, and I think we should all be comfortable with, is being upfront and direct about our situations with our bishops.
So I would ask you in return, does your bishop know of the stress being put on your family life due to your calling? If he does not, he should. Go and talk with him about it. It may be that he will advise you to continue in the calling, and perhaps offer suggestions as to ways to ease the home situation. It may be that he will choose to release you. Either way, he should make that call with understanding behind it.
With wisdom, a balance must be struck. Callings are important. We should be doing all we can to magnify them. And we should not use the general difficulties of life and family as an excuse to do less than what we could with them. But we also should not be prioritizing our callings over the well-being of our families. However, most times when there is a balance that needs to be struck, we may find that what is truly required is merely a bit more sacrifice on our parts.
Could one in your situation, for example, give up other activities to spend time with ones spouse? Is it really only a choice between the wife and the calling? Is there nothing else to give of lesser importance? Could we watch less TV, or spend less time with sports or hobbies? Are there other aspect of our lives we could address to solve the problem? These are questions we must all answer for ourselves.
Elder Ballard taught the importance of this balance,
“As a result of their focusing too much time and energy on their Church service, eternal family relationships can deteriorate. Employment performance can suffer. This is not healthy, spiritually or otherwise. While there may be times when our Church callings require more intense effort and unusual focus, we need to strive to keep things in proper balance. We should never allow our service to replace the attention needed by other important priorities in our lives. Remember King Benjamin’s counsel: “And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength” (Mosiah 4:27).
Ultimately, you must decide if the concern is truly valid or not and make a judgment. You have the right to inspiration for your home — and as indicated, home and family comes first. Get on your knees and seek inspiration in this regard.
Gramps
I wholeheartedly agree with Elder Ballard on this about too much focus on church callings can ruin family relationships. It happened in my own family growing up and I watched as a few of my siblings wandered off the strait and narrow when a steady hand from a father AT HOME (who wasn’t) could have saved them from many, many problems and consequent embarrassing and tearful confessions in the bishop’s office.
I know I have stated this before, but the church is there to ASSIST families, NOT REPLACE THEM. If you or your spouse or even your parents have their family/church priorities out of whack, I suggest you sit down in a family council immediately and correct them. If left unresolved over time, I promise your family solidarity will eventually see cracking, if not breaking at the foundation. If that happens, you are in for one world of hurt and you will blame yourself for doing nothing to stop it.
As for you, Kyle, I can only say this: An unhappy wife is the cause of an unhappy household. You might want to take your wife with you to see the bishop and let her vent her frustrations to him about your situation. It should give him a better picture of what is going on. You talking to the bishop alone as the mediator between him and your wife is bad news. Give her a platform to express herself with you and him present instead.
Also, if the calling is taking too much of your precious family time, the bishop needs to start delegating better. I see the mistake of too many wards and stakes where all the callings only go to a handful of people and rotate among them. It might also be good if you have any inactive members in your ward to call them to positions like scoutmaster, ward basketball coach, homemaking teacher, etc. to bring them back to church where they belong.
I think some sisters do not have what it takes to be the spouse of a husband with a heavy church calling, be it scoutmaster, bishop, stake president, etc. They seem to forget (or don’t put 2 and 2 together) the covenants of sacrifice they make in the temple. If they begrudge their husbands a few nights a week, then how would they react if their husbands were called on a 5 year mission like Brigham Young and others were? What about those sisters who husbands are called home to heaven early, leaving them alone in this earth life for decades? Would these sisters have what it takes to cross the plains on foot for months at a time in knee-deep snow? To do it without complaint and gratitude before God? Sometimes I think we are far, far away from a Zion mentality. I don’t know what these people are going to do when the really hard times come in this country.
I share your sentiment here, but there are a couple of things you are forgetting:
1. Those great people of the past were born into that generation for that purpose and they also had trials they had to overcome.
2. The prophecy of men’s (and women’s) hearts failing them is for our generation (hence the rising number of instances of cruel and mean treatment at our local schools, suicides, missionaries and members on anti-depressants, temple divorces, and other trials we we wish we could say we didn’t have to deal with.)
It’s like trying to equate apples with oranges. While we both have mortal lives on the same Earth (like apples and oranges are both fruit), the rigors of school, getting an education, adopting technology, convincing someone to take the plunge with you in marriage, etc. are NOT the same (like apple and orange trees do not thrive in the same environmental conditions).
We have to stop looking to the past and saying so and so’s generation was better and deal with who and what we have right here, right now. God put us here for a reason, so what are we doing with OUR time? You know the saying, “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence,” I assume? It is true we can look to the past for inspiration, but the greatest inspiration we will ever receive comes from the HOLY GHOST. We don’t have to dig in the ground or rummage through volumes of journals for that.
People in the church talk with such pride about our pioneer heritage, but do they realize WE are the pioneers in this generation? Not with handcarts, of course, but it is THIS generation that has opened the floodgates for instantaneous distribution of information worldwide. Because of this, people doing temple work are not mistakenly baptizing, taking out endowments, and so on for the same person upwards of ten times. It is because of this, general conference can be transmitted around the world real-time. Do you think for one minute the majority of our forefathers could have imagined such miraculous advances?
Remember Joseph Smith said:
“Brethren, I have been very much edified and instructed in your testimonies here tonight, but I want to say to you before the Lord, that you know no more concerning the destinies of this Church and kingdom than a babe upon its mother’s lap. You don’t comprehend it.”
Prophets who were privileged to see our generation have looked forward to it with great anticipation. Therefore, it is my contention that we should “put our shoulder to the wheel” with the strengths and talents WE possess and be happy with the contribution we are able to give, even if it does appear as the “widow’s mite” to our critics. It does no good to look back or forward in time or around us today and see what we don’t have and complain about it. God gave us what he knows WE needed right here, right now, and in our time.
Now I pose this question: Are we content to bury our one talent if that’s all we have? Or are we willing to lay that single, unpolished talent with all its flaws on the altar of sacrifice before our Heavenly Father and pray with a mighty prayer to take away the dross and refine it?