We’re the Woodhouse family.
We’re members of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
Our family is very busy.
The activities each week make your head spin.
We get home at the end of the day, and we
collapse as we high-five each other and say,
“We made it through another day.”
We haven’t done this in awhile.
I love my parents so much.
I feel really blessed to be raised in the Church,
because I like that they know the gospel, they live the
gospel and teach us the gospel.
But they’re still realistic about the world
and what we live in, and pretty understanding.
I always feel like I can talk to them.
I think the thing that keeps our family going is knowing
that we’re not only for this life, but that we’ll be
together in the next life.
Those relationships we have now
will continue on. The friendships and love
we have will not end here.
Every day, decisions they make
will affect our family—
not only them individually, but it will affect
our family as a whole.
I feel like my parents taught us how to be truly happy,
not just the temporary joy from getting a new car,
going to a party, or other things.
It’s learning how to be happy by living for the bigger
picture and not for the moment.
And they worked hard to instill that in us
by making sure we had family time
and going to church every week.
There was a time when our family was
financially struggling.
We’d just had the twins.
That’s seven kids.
Living in California is expensive.
And I can remember it was really tough.
We were in high school, and all of us played sports.
So all of us were out the door, and we had jobs, and we
were working hard.
And it was really hard.
But because of the Church, we could keep our heads high
and hope for better times, ’cause we were putting
our faith in the Lord.
We put our 10% aside for tithing though we knew
we were struggling and we needed every penny.
The blessing our family experienced from the
financial struggle is that they’re close to one another
and that they pull together.
We learned how to rise above the situation
and still have a good time, still laugh together,
still have fun despite our lack of materialistic things
that everyone else had.
So through the struggles and the adversity and
challenges we all face—whether it’s financial or your
kids, as they grow through agency, making
their own choices—that you pray to a higher being.
You ask for help and comfort, and you ask
for direction and His involvement when
you’ve done all you can.
That brings tremendous comfort to me, being able
to rely on Heavenly Father and see His help in our lives.
Not bad, not bad.