Meaning Found In Facing Challenges
Q. I have heard you say that when bad things happen one should try to find the blessing. I have a hard time trying to do that when I’m all consumed with the lousy part of what is going on or what I have to face. Any suggestions? Boston
A. Being able to “find the blessing” is a blessing in itself, as well as a learned art.
I remember one letter from a woman describing the terrible trials experienced by her married sister: illness, floods, house fires, etc. She went to her father to discuss her feelings of pity for what her sister had had to endure and asked her father, a very religious man, why God was hurting her sister so much.
The father seemed surprised to hear her comment, and said he had been praying blessings to God in gratitude for the fact that his daughter had physically and emotionally survived all those terrible challenges.
We don’t find meaning in our lives from a lack of challenges or even misery. We find meaning in our lives by how we face these challenges.
Q. I just read that Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Calif., was the sponsor of a bill which passed the House of Representatives calling for the elimination of domestic partnership benefits. What is your sense of this? Will it pass the Senate? - Los Angeles
A. I am wholly in support of his bill and his rationale. Rep. Riggs was quoted as saying, “It is wrong to elevate a domestic relationship, whether heterosexual or homosexual, to the same status as the sacred union - marriage - between a man and a woman.”
Unfortunately, it will probably fail because of politics. What amuses me is the accusation of the gay and lesbian advocacy groups that those opposed to domestic partnership and marriage between homosexuals are “forcing their morality on others.”
In San Francisco, organizations such as Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army were pressured by the city to offer domestic partner benefits to their employees, although the policy is clearly contrary to their profound religious values. If this isn’t forcing moral values on others, I don’t know what is.
The truth is that all laws designate a morality: right and wrong. I have always been sensitive and compassionate to gay and lesbian callers and patients in the almost 25 years of my career, first as a therapist and then as a talk-show host. Nonetheless, I believe that the steady erosion of oft-denigrated “family values” has resulted in a disaster for our children and society.
Never before have we had so many children in broken or never-made homes; children into drugs, violence and sex; children killing themselves and others; children raised by institutions instead of by parents; children killing their own infants; children being molested by mom’s many boyfriends; children not doing well academically; and children lost emotionally.
You have to be in serious denial not to see the connection between these maladies and the undermining of what structure and behavior best supports the raising of children. On my program, for example, I’ve seen a terrible trend of people getting married, having children and then deciding they are gay and abandoning their obligations for their sex life.
Another trend is women becoming single mothers by choice or having a stupid hopefulness that the guy in the situation will marry them. Now that all of these so-called alternatives are deemed “acceptable,” the children are not protected by public opinion, much less personal morality.
When words like family values, two-parent family, commitment, morality and religion become denigrated and people protecting these concepts are condemned as phobic and hate-filled, the society is doomed.
Dr. Laura’s national radio program airs on KGA-AM (1510) from noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.