It’s Families All the Way Down

There are many precious and wonderful things, available only to those of us blessed and valiant enough to be born into faithful LDS families, that you Gentiles are missing out on. For example, you have no idea how many different ingredients you can put inside a single Jell-O mold; we’ve been refining this technique for decades. You don’t have Family Home Evening, the mandatory Monday night family together time all true believing Mormon families observe. If you spend time as a family, it’s usually voluntary, and can happen any night of the week, which we can all agree is absurdly haphazard. You probably only have one holy book, the Bible. Not to brag, but we’ve got four.

But of all the things that we, as Mormons, have that you Gentiles don’t, probably the best thing of all is Eternal Families.

From the time I was little, I knew with absolute certainty that my dad and mom were going to be my dad and mom forever. Even after I grew up, and arguably needed less parenting. Even after we were all dead, and resurrected, and living in the Celestial Kingdom. I would never look at them and think, Hey, that’s Arthur and Sharon. No, millennia from now, when I have seventeen generations of great-grandchildren and Starfleet Academy finally admits its first students with the goal of sending them on missions of scientific exploration to strange new worlds, I will still be calling Arthur and Sharon, Mom and Dad.

This is because my parents were married in the Holy Temple, which means that we will maintain this same family relationship forever. My parents will always be my parents, and my siblings will always be my siblings. Like, we will all have these exact same roles. For infinity.

After you Gentiles die, if you and your parents end up sorted into the same afterlife houses, they won’t be your parents anymore. They’ll just be, like, people you know. You can blow them off if you want. You can re-introduce yourselves and decide if you want to keep hanging out, or if it’s a better plan for you all to go your separate ways and create found families with people you like spending time with.

And that’s a real tragedy. My heart hurts to think of how lonely it’s going to be for you, spending eternity with people you love and whose company you truly enjoy, people who choose to be around you and love you in return.

Me? I’m going to be spending my eternity with people who are forced to love me, because they’re stuck with me and have no actual choice in the matter, and I can’t tell you how reassuring that is.

I’ll give you an example of why this is so great.

Recently, my sisters and I tried to plan our parents’ 50th wedding anniversary via text message. This was by far the lowest-conflict option because everyone could walk away and breathe a little if they got upset, rather than just having to turn off their camera, like we would if we were planning via a Zoom call.

We all agreed that a 50th anniversary celebration was probably a good idea, and that Mom and Dad would probably like it. And that was the last thing we agreed on.

Some of us thought we should have the celebration at a restaurant. Others thought an outdoor cookout was the way to go. There were some suggestions that we not get together at all, and just Venmo each other a portion of a collective gift. Some of us wanted the party to be a surprise, some of us thought that surprises were overrated. Some of us didn’t want the hassle of cleaning up a home-based party, and others of us didn’t want the hassle of leaving the house for an outside event. Ultimately one of us boycotted the celebration all together, and everyone else had their feelings hurt.

If this happened in a Gentile family, you would have an eternity in front of you of never working through those family dynamics.

But we’re going to have centuries to get this right! Imagine us planning Mom and Dad’s 500th anniversary! Or their 5,000th! At some point in time, one sister is going to text, “Okay, that sounds fine,” and no other sister is going to get really upset that the word “fine” was used and leave the group chat. We’re going to get So. Much. Practice.

But you Gentiles won’t be having 500th wedding anniversary parties at all, because in your afterlife, nobody is married.

I know I’m lucky. I FEEL lucky. Because one thousand years from now, Mom will still be reminding me about that one time I hurt her feelings when I was six, and Dad will still be vaguely disappointed in me because I’m divorced, and I’ll still get to have screaming fights with Alexis when she hogs the bathroom. Uncle George will still be ruining Thanksgiving by talking about the election, or how great Reaganomics were, and I’ll still be spending Christmas Day with the Idaho cousins who bullied me.

Maybe that doesn’t sound great to you. But that’s because you don’t truly understand the importance and holiness of family. In Heavenly Father’s One True Church, we know that enjoying your time with the people you’re spending eternity with is not God’s plan for us, and also that His plan is perfect.

Look how happy this family is!

This is because they know that their Dad will be saying things like, “He who smelt it, dealt it” into the next millennium.

Will Mom and Dad still get to set my curfew when I’m 12,000 years old? Will Aunt Shirley still tell me I’ve broken my parents’ hearts with my life choices? I don’t know - but am I ever excited to find out!

I’ll admit that there are some parts that are still fuzzy to me. Like, I’m not sure if I’m required to share an actual Celestial House with my parents. And if I am, doesn’t it follow that they’re required to share an actual Celestial House with their parents, too, since their parents were married in the temple? And what about their parents, who were also married in the temple? And all the kids, and their spouses, and their kids’ kids and spouses? If the spouse’s parents were married in the temple, is there a sort of time-share arrangement, or do the in-laws move in, too?

Also, who makes the house rules? Is it the oldest set of Mormon parents, because they’re kind of the original parents? Is it Heavenly Father? And, if so, what are His feelings about everyone getting a first helping of dinner before anyone has seconds? Who picks the movie on family movie night?

If I get my own Celestial House, and just go visit my parents every other Saturday or something, how is that different from the Gentile arrangement of just hanging out with the people who used to be their parents whenever they feel like it? How often are we required to have family reunions with the whole extended family, and, when we do, who picks the games? Am I going to have to learn to throw and catch a football? Because my hand-eye coordination is not good, and also I don’t like sports.

Like I said, I’m still fuzzy on the details, but that’s why we have faith.