In January our town (and a lot of the country) was hit with a giant ice storm that knocked out power for tens of thousands of homes. Thankfully, our lights stayed on. When the roads had cleared, but crews were still out fixing downed electrical wires and many families were still living in the dark, my husband invited a coworker and her family over to our house for dinner. They had been without power for a full week at that point. 

As we were making dinner, my 12 year old was (for lack of a better word) murmuring. Hard core murmuring. In hindsight, I get it. We’d been cooped up most of the week, school had been canceled every single day, and she was probably seriously over her American Academy of Pediatrics recommended amount of screen time. Yet, here we were in the moment. I was making dinner for a family with a baby and toddler and a dark/cold house and she was complaining about everything. 

At some point during the murmuring she shouted at me, “I don’t understand why we’re inviting total strangers into our home!”

And…I’m not proud to admit…but that’s when all my patience went out the front door and I…freaked out at her, “We are making dinner for this poor family that is trying to take care of their baby and toddler without any power. This is the least we can do! And here you are complaining about it?” 

Unsurprising to anyone who has ever been a parent, rather than ceasing her murmuring, my angry outburst only escalated the family dynamic to a place far beyond where it had been before and our house was “full of contention.”

That week we’d been studying 1 Nephi 7 in the “Come Follow Me” lessons. As a quick recap of that chapter: Laman and Lemuel are murmuring/angry about a whole lot of stuff. Their younger brother, Nephi gets annoyed and starts saying things like, “How can you not remember…?” And basically chastises them for a while. Similar to what happened at my house when I angrily chastised my daughter, rather than stop the murmuring, Nephi’s comments only drew out the worst in his brothers. They went from a 5 to a 10 on the angry scale and suddenly Nephi found himself tied up with his brothers threatening to kill him. 

Next, Nephi prays, breaks out of the ropes, and Laman and Lemuel are still just as angry. 

The only thing that actually calms Laman and Lemuel down is one of their wives and their mother in law “plead” with them. The account in the scriptures doesn’t give any indication of what that conversation looked like, but I can imagine that conversation was calmer. It didn’t have the same exasperation that Nephi’s convo with them had. Whatever was included in that conversation clearly included some de-escalation tactics that helped everyone to apologize and become friendly again. 

I worry that sometimes (a lot of times) we act far too much like Nephi and not enough like the unnamed women who calmed the anger. I mean, I do it. The example of my daughter during the storm was just one of many parenting moments I could whip out. [I hope that I have enough decent parenting moments to outweigh the times I lose my patience, that my kids will be okay (doing my best over here!)].

But how often do we do this same thing outside of parenting contexts, too? 

At the same time as that January storm, the mixed-faith marriage series was running on the Exponent blog. Though I’m not in a mixed-faith marriage, I did grow up in a mixed-faith home and saw a lot of difficulty my parents experienced in navigating their relationship that eventually culminated in divorce. I was touched by a lot of the posts on the Exponent blog that week from women who were choosing to not act like the know-it-all that Nephi was and not chastising their loved ones. Rather, they were finding points of common interest. I imagine that the women mentioned in 1 Nephi 7 (who de-escalated the fight between Laman/Lemuel and Nephi) likely thought about their family dynamics using “helpful narratives” as Laura Parry advised. They likely felt pain, being caught in the middle. But I hope their pain was the “clean pain” rather than the “dirty pain” that Chris Rich described. Maybe they even looked for the blessings of their mixed-faith family dynamics as Terry did so eloquently. I imagine they approached their conversation with respect as Emma Renshaw has learned to. I imagine they approached their conversation with Laman and Lemuel from a place of mutual understanding. That’s what we need more of.

And this isn’t just about mixed-faith marriages. This is about mixed-faith families and mixed-faith friendships. I hear far too often from friends who have left the church that their loved ones do chastise them. The chastisement creates an atmosphere of contention. Rather than mutual respect and understanding, a difference of belief turns into a thorny relationship full of pain. I don’t think that’s what any of us want. 

I don’t think this only applies to mixed-faith families or friendships. I honestly think these principles apply to any relationship at all. Just as I was quick to escalate my daughter’s anger (that had nothing to do with religion), I think we need to regularly be asking ourselves, “Are we treating each other with respect? Are we looking for the blessings in the situation? And through tough stuff, are we feeling stuck in dirty pain? Or feeling the clean pain? 

Let’s try to have more compassion, more understanding, and learn to be empathetic to the feelings others have.