Insights about our Relations with our Children

     I was grateful for your statement in your letter of last week.  You say you are blessed to have been sent to Bob and JoAnn Lewis.  I was thinking about that statement, about how unique a church doctrine that concept expresses and its implications for family life.  In no other religion would people know that we all existed before our earth lives and that we are all siblings in the spirit family of God. The birth of a baby into a family is like a reunion of pre-existent friends.  The veil of forgetfulness about this earlier life, which has been drawn across our minds to allow the testing component of our earthly experience, limits our recollections of specifics in pre-existent relationships.  However, I do not recall any baby of ours who seemed like a stranger when they were born.  I think this familiarity and joy of association is characterized in a line in my patriarchal blessing which says that in the resurrection, I will be able to mingle with my loved ones again as I did before I came here to earth.  It is no wonder that Latter-day saints seem to be becoming unique in having a positive desire to have children. 
     The notion that your children are pre-existing equals, even siblings, is significant.  Birth suggests a three-way partnership with God in providing a way for one of his spirit children to receive a body and have a family for nurturance.  The idea feels good to me that each baby comes with its prior developments, that their personality is not just tabula rosa [meaning, a blank slate]for the parents to shape from nothing.  It suggests that parenting is akin to raising a delicate and beautiful plant, with primary responsibility to provide a supportive and stimulating environment.  The plant supplies much of its own direction for growth.  The unique personality of the child can unfold and enlarge in such a setting, and move toward its own special potential. (From a letter to Emilie, August 3, 1995, while she was serving a mission)

How the Forbidden Fruit may have tasted

    Wendy and I were reading from 2 Nephi and I noticed that Lehi spoke concerning Adam and Eve and then described the bitterness of forbidden fruit which they had eaten:

    And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.  (2 Nephi 2:15)

    I thought, “Wait a minute, didn’t Eve say that this fruit was good or even delicious?” (Moses 4:12; Genesis 3:6)
    And she concluded that in the end, taking the forbidden fruit was a great blessing:

    And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. (Moses 5:11)
 
    Lehi also concluded that this transgression was necessary for the progression of mankind:

    And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.
    And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.
    But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.
    Adam fell that men might be; and men care, that they might have joy. (2 Nephi 2: 22-25)
 
    So, does all of this contradict Lehi’s original interpretation that the fruit was bitter?  I thought that the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden and the loss of association with God must have painful to them along with many other things, such as the disobedience of their children, the need to acquire their food by the sweat of their faces, and so forth.  On the other hand, it opened the door to having family and to the joy of redemption in the Gospel.  I thought that perhaps the taste of the fruit was both bitter but also sweet.
    And then I had another image.  I thought of one of my favorite places to eat, Panda Express and especially the menu item SweetFire Chicken Breast, the deep fried white meat chicken nuggets in a succulent spicy sauce with a mix of pineapple, peppers, and onions.  It is so wonderfully bitter sweet.
    So, both Lehi and Eve may have been correct.