One Step at a Time

As we suggested earlier, quality family life is a saga of becoming. It’s constantly finding ways to love more, learn more, contribute more, nurture more, and interact with greater effectiveness and interdependence.

One of the best ways to do that is to see family leadership as an ongoing focus and to always seek to improve your family, as well as the legacy you give to your family of the future. In two-parent families, family leadership can become a great and joyful “co-mission” —the shared interest and focus that unites couples in purpose and brings the greatest happiness in shared fulfillment.

As you exercise leadership in your family, we encourage you to remember, as we’ve said before: quality family life is not an accident; it is an achievement. And growth is incremental. It usually comes one step at a time.

Remember also that our most important “success” is within the walls of our own homes.^[20] In terms of changing the world and making it a better place, parenting is as good as it gets. Of course, it’s important to be successful in other things as well. But there is nothing that will have a more lasting effect than the effort we put into building strong marriages and successfully raising the next generation.

Effective partnering and parenting are not easy. They are immense and complex challenges. They require the greatest talent, creativity, and commitment we can muster. They are at the high end of personal challenge as well as social contribution.

But the investment brings the greatest returns in terms of personal happiness. When we learn to see home as a foundation, a vital place where we can contribute most meaningfully, we open up a whole new dimension of life balance and joy.

^[20]Lee, Harold B. Strengthening the Home. Pamphlet. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1973, p. 7.