Spartans

Circumstances lately (okay - way too much sibling rivalry) have led me to ponder on how to establish family unity.

I was reading about a man named Lycurgus - he was the lawgiver or the Greek city-state of Sparta. His government lasted for more than 500 years! AND it was not a comfortable society to live in - the people had to sacrifice a lot for this state (including their children - they were brought up by the state after the age of 7!)

I was intrigued..."Why?" I asked myself, "did the people not rebel? Why did it go on even after he was dead?"

I gave it a great deal of thought and even though I have different goals than Lycurgus, I learned a lot, I'll write on it more later, but one of the things that I concluded is that he was able to get his people to see and buy into his vision for their state. He truly believed in it and it really was ideal for what he was trying to accomplish.

It occurred to me... I need my kids to really SEE my vision for our family and for them to also believe in it and want it. This way we would all be reaching for the same goal and we would be united.



How do I accomplish this? Some of the obvious ways are to inspire them daily to see the vision by morning devotionals, FHE, family scriptures and family prayers.



I realized that they also needed to have the skills (physically, spiritually and emotionally) to work towards that mission. I'll write more later about what I've come up with so far to help them develop those skills, but the first thing I did after reading about Lycurgus is to ask the kids to help me put together a mission statement. I might add something later, but I wanted to keep it very simple so the kids could see a clear goal. Here's what we put together:



We, the Bates love to help each other and those around us.
We will build our characters by learning, saying, and doing good things.
With strong characters we can help our Heavenly Father by sharing our light with those around us - especially each other.
We will work hard to make sure every one of us makes it back to be together with our Heavenly Father and Jesus forever.



They all agreed that this is what they wanted for our family. Since then (okay, it's only been a week!), when there is contention, someone will often remember to say, "Hey, that's not helping us reach our family mission!" It's been a good thing.