Honor Your Parents
Honor Your Parents
June 16, 2024 – Topic #2
Grandpa Bruce Randall
Hello Grandchildren,
The subject I wish to focus on today to have you consider is “honoring your parents”. (remember to look up the words you don’t know in the dictionary.)
It is Father’s Day today and I thought it would be a good subject for you to get a little bit better understanding of the importance of honoring your parents, from Grandpa’s point of view 😊.
I fully believe in the Ten Commandments given to Moses from God. The fifth of the ten commandment says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). To honor someone is an action. Honoring your parents involves several actions on your part.
Honoring Your Parents
· Listen to your parents. “Stop” and listen to not just what they are saying
but also try to understand “why” they are saying it. The why can help you honor
them better. Stopping to listen is one of the first steps in honoring your
parents.
· Act on what your parents ask you to do.
Make a special effort when they ask you to help the family in one way or
another. (cleaning your room, cleaning the bathroom, picking up a sibling from
an activity, etc.) This will help make you a better friend, neighbor, student, leader,
etc.
· Chose to be kind to your parents. How you
treat your parents is a good representation of how you will probably treat
others down the road. They really do love you. Being kind honors them in a very
special way. It is a choice you make.
· Remember that your parents are not perfect,
no one is. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t listen to them or follow
what they say. They are usually trying their best to do what will help you
figure out how to be a better person. You cannot always see that, but that
doesn’t mean it is not true. If they have a bad character trait, learn from
them that you don’t want that character trait and move on. Hopefully you too
will be a parent someday and you will remember this same counsel will apply to
your children.
· Do not yell at your parents. When you yell
at your parents, that does not honor them, and it defines you as more of a
little child (almost a baby). Your parents feed you, buy you clothing, they work
very hard to put a roof over each child’s head, and they try to teach you to be
good and to help others.
· Don’t say bad things about your parents to
anyone else. Saying bad things about your parents says more about you than
it does about your parents. No one likes gossip, and you demean yourself when
you speak poorly of them. One result that can happen is that your friends will think
that you probably will say something bad about them to other friends when they
are not around. Eventually, the relationship of trust you have with your friends
will erode because of they way to speak about others.
· Strive to improve yourselves. This is one
of grandpa’s favorites. If you are trying to become a better person by learning
to be a better person through service to others, educating yourself, being the
best person, you can, this is a wonderful way to honor your parents. Don’t
worry if you fall down a lot on this one. Everyone does. Just pick yourself up
and keep trying to improve. This happens to grandpa every day.
Real Examples Of Honoring Your Parents
There are numerous examples of your parents when they honored your Grammy and me. I wanted to add a couple of pictures to events that might make that a bit special to you, but I could not find the ones I wanted. Nevertheless, I found a few that I liked and thought you might appreciate.
Jason, Matt, and Nick all became what is called an “Eagle Scout”. Scouting used to be a big
part of teaching the young men in the Church ways to improve and learn different
skills and teachings. The picture below is when Jason received his Eagle Scout
award. Matt and Nick were in their respective scout uniforms that day. Becoming
an Eagle Scout was one way in which all three boys were able to improve their
lives. Grammy and I really wanted that to happen for them. We did “push them a
bit”, there is no question about it. That sometimes happens in life. You will
figure it out more when you become a parent. Each child needs to have the ability
to choose what they want to do in life, but there are times where guidance by
their parents is very appropriate. We don’t like adversity, but learning how to
overcome adversity is a grand characteristic in each of our lives. You need to
learn that early on and it takes some real effort to do so. Grammy and I really
felt honored when each of the boys earned their Eagle Scout.
Lacey and Jenny both earned their “Young Womanhood Medallion” award. This was a way the Church taught young women to improve their lives in various ways. It included service, skills, and spiritual learning. I could not find any pictures of Lacey and Jenny receiving their rewards while writing this, so I searched and came up with a couple of their school pictures. Grammy and I are so honored to have Lacey and Jenny to have earned their Young Womanhood Medallion. These two continue to honor us as they live honorable lives.
All of your parents continue to honor Grammy and me in so many ways it is hard for us to name them all. Here are just a few:
- They chose to get married and have children.
- They choose to strive to be educated and continue to learn and improve their lives.
- From my viewpoint, they are honest in their lives.
- They love you and try to teach you all to be good people.
- They provide us with emotional support while we choose to serve missions for the Church so we can help other people.
Grammy and I have tried to honor our parents by “living true to what they taught us. They taught us true and virtuous principles to live by. I really believe that if our parents were alive, both of them would say that we have tried our best to honor them in how we live our lives, and that we continue to strive to do so.
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