The Family Proclamation and its Importance to Me by Hannah Gardzalla

Hi!  My name is Hannah, age 17. I absolutely LOVE music, especially singing, and I plan on going to college for music education.  I love volunteering in the community, and hanging out with my Young Women girls at church!

Coming from a broken home, the first time that I deeply focused on the words of the Family Proclamation, it left me with a bitter taste.  My family situation fit nowhere in the model provided in the Proclamation, and I felt ashamed--not of myself specifically, but of what was wrong with my family in relation to what is outlined in the Proclamation.

In my biological family, my father never took charge, and my mother would often leave me and my younger brother in the care of our grandmother.  My parents rarely spent quality time with us kids due to the fact that they were divorced, and they did not teach us many of the values I have learned since becoming involved with the church.

My mother would often go from work to a series of local pubs, and my father did not really want much to do with us children at the time.

For a few years, we would move in with my mother's boyfriend.  They would break up, and we would move back in with my grandmother.  The last time my mother did this, her boyfriend sexually abused me. 

When I tried to tell my mother, she turned away from me, and I finally ended up moving in to a house with my "new" mom, a friend and mentor who takes good care of me.  She is an LDS lady who never married, but takes care of me as if I were her own.

As much as this twinge of bitterness marks my past, the Proclamation also bring me hope.  It gives me a guide to follow so I can avoid putting my children through the same horrors and heartbreaks that I went through.

Because of the Family Proclamation, I know to look for a man that shares my beliefs, and desires to be married and sealed in temple some day.  In the future, I will have a chance to do indexing and to do temple ordinances for the eternal well-being of my family.  My future children will be brought up in a home built on the faith of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and they can have an eternal family as well.

I know that this is the true church of Jesus Christ, and that Heavenly Father loves us very much, because we are His children, for now and forever.  He created the Family Proclamation to help His children create households that love each other and love Christ together.

I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to share it on Facebook! Be sure to check out the other host blogs today for more wonderful posts and testimonies about family.

You can also share your love of family by sharing photos online this month under the hashtag #ILovetheFamilyProclamation.

Here are links to the other blogs:

CranialHiccups

and

A Thing Called Love