Article January 16, 2012 Issue

A happy home

By Melanie Wahlberg

A joyful household and family . . . sounds great! I’m sure looking for more of that. But I’m having to learn where to look. Experience has shown me that joy doesn’t come from the home and what’s in it—and I can’t look to my kids as a source of joy. In fact, as much as I’d like to, it seems that I don’t even provide joy for them. I’m finding that my path to joy, and consequently the path to witnessing joy in my home, deals profoundly with the nature of God. 

This has been a fundamental shift in perspective for me, and I’ve probably been reluctant to come to it. The general consensus is that at their best, personal relationships—maybe especially those between husbands and wives, and parents and children—can bring joy to an individual. And while these relationships are a tangible means of expressing joy, they ultimately disappoint me if I depend on the people themselves for my happiness. I hope my children are learning this along with me. I suspect I’ve disappointed them at times, but the experiences we’ve had together are pushing us to look more and more to God.

A few weeks ago, my second-grade son came home with the news that he’d gotten in trouble at recess and was scheduled to see the principal for discipline the next day. He was tearful and afraid. I found myself spending a lot of time with him giving him new ways to think about his situation, trying to make us both feel better. Actually, I was doing a lot of talking. I have to admit I felt somewhat driven to give him just the right spiritual thought so that the meeting would go well. This wasn’t the first time he’d been called to the principal’s office, and I felt some embarrassment myself. Finally I knew I had talked enough. Neglecting my own prayerful work to once again act out the next day’s meeting wasn’t getting either of us closer to joy. I affectionately tucked him into bed a bit early and left him alone, encouraging him to listen to God. This freed me up to spiritualize my own sense of the situation, though I took a different tack than earlier that day.