We Do Not Doubt Our Mothers Knew It

Recently my Elder’s Quorum President spoke to me about parenting and the effect of our parenting on our children.  He commented on his own experience with his mother and how some of her negative patterns as a parent found their way into his own parenting.  He spoke of his struggle to overcome some of those tendencies and cautioned me that the way I treat and parent my children will influence the way that they in turn treat and parent their own children.  Surely what we teach our children verbally is significant and crucial in trying to raise a righteous generation in our time.  But perhaps even more important is what we teach our children by our actions and behaviors and patterns in the home.  I know that in my own home I have been too uptight with my children and taken misbehaviors too seriously at times, and now I see that in my older children as they give sharp rebukes to their younger siblings for innocent spills or minor mistakes.  What they see us do and how they see us behave has a far greater impact on them then the actual lessons we verbally teach. 

                I think we see this principle in action in the story of the stripling warriors.  These young men were “exceedingly valiant for courage” and though “they never had fought, yet they did not fear death.”  Helaman recorded that they “did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives.”  A big part of that attitude they had was of course because “they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them” (Alma 53:20, 56:47).  But I think even more important than that was what they had witnessed their parents do—their parents had been willing to sacrifice their own lives, and many of them had.  Surely these young men either saw or heard about their incredible acts of sacrifice for the gospel of their parents.  When the Lamanites had come upon the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, those new converts, the parents of the young warriors, “went out to meet them, and prostrated themselves before them to the earth, and began to call on the name of the Lord; and thus they were in this attitude when the Lamanites began to fall upon them, and began to slay them with the sword.”  They had been willing to give up their lives for the Lord, and “without meeting any resistance, [the Lamanites] did slay a thousand and five of them” (Alma 24:21-22).  Given that, it is no wonder that the young stripling warriors, probably about a dozen years later, were willing to similarly sacrifice their lives in defense of their families and their faith.  They told Helaman, “We do not doubt our mothers knew it”—that surety about their mothers’ faith came from not only their verbal teachings but their actions in giving up all for the sake of the gospel (Alma 56:48).

            Paul wrote to Timothy about how faith had been passed on through the generations to the young leader: “When I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also” (2 Timothy 1:5).  In that same way the faith of the parents of the stripling warriors was also passed to their sons, and we have the opportunity and responsibility today to likewise pass along our faith and commitment to the Lord to our children.  I hope that mine can not only hear that faith from me, but also see what it really means as they watch my attempt to live the gospel in our home.