family time – Page 2 – Speaking of Polygamy…

The internet has no shortage of places to discuss reality TV shows such as “Sister Wives”.

My friend hangs out on one such Facebook group. The other day this was posted (by someone I don’t personally know):

My friend texted me before commenting to make sure I was fine with her response, because she wanted to talk about me and my family. This is what she wrote:

On one hand I can see the point-of-view of the original poster, but on the other hand, I believe plural marriage has the potential to be a beautiful way of living. Nothing valuable comes easily. Having lived both monogamy (for 11 years) and polygamy (for 9 years), I say from my experience that I prefer polygamy and wouldn’t choose monogamy. I have no regrets. I am not in an abusive relationship, my children spend lots of time with their father, and I am grateful for my sisterwife and my life wouldn’t be the same without her.

I am grateful to have a family that is a good example of healthy polygamy, as evidenced by my friend’s response. By the way, I’ve known that friend since we were a little monogamous family of 4, so she has seen my family go thru a lot of history and changes.

My friend is right that my family does as much as possible together. We spend family time together every evening (I’ll write more about that soon), we pray together before bed every night, we host fellowship meetings in our home together, we vacation together, we celebrate holidays together, we spend the Sabbath together. Even on a normal weekday full of homeschool, housework, errands, and childcare, we each interact quite a bit. I can see how a polygamous family living in separate houses could fall apart like Kody Brown’s seems to be. But we lived apart for the first 5 years after Melissa joined the family, and we still did what it took to be united.

Mothers everywhere know what it means when their husband is traveling for work: All the parenting, 24 hours a day, falls to you.

Such was the situation I found myself in, with my husband across the country on business, and I was discouraged and exhausted. The days were long, our routine disrupted, and the children tired of not seeing their father.

My son blew the shofar to call us to our evening family time, where everyone has a chance to show something or tell about their day; we lovingly call this time “Shofar & Tell” (a play on “Show and Tell” — get it?).

We gathered in the living room of my sisterwife Melissa, and as I routinely do, I pulled out the family Happy Book to write in while we shared our lives and visited together.

My son disrespectfully jumped on my case and told me I shouldn’t have a “toy” during Shofar & Tell (referring to my writing in the Happy Book). He’d been nitpicking and criticizing me a lot, so the uncalled-for criticism was especially frustrating.

We officially got started with Shofar & Tell, and when my daughter’s turn came to hold the shofar and show/tell us something, she took the opportunity to complain about me.

I was hurt, and since I had been struggling for some time with those two children disrespecting me, questioning me, and dishonoring me, it got to be too much.

I said to my sisterwife Melissa, “Why does everything come down to criticizing me and complaining about me? Everyone in this house seems to be starting from a place of ‘Mom is wrong. Mom has wronged me. What is Mom doing wrong right now? What can I criticize Mom about right now?’ I feel like everyone is assuming my guilt until I’m proven innocent.”

Melissa saw the problem, recognized my need for support, and she truly stepped up.

She launched into a scolding lecture about about how lucky the children are to have me; how lucky they are to have a mother who stays home with them and focuses on taking care of them; how they shouldn’t be rude to me; how they should treat me with respect and love; how they ought to show gratitude for me and the good life they have.

She went on and on. A couple of the children got teary-eyed over it. When she was done, she gave every child a chance to say something. To me she said, “I want you to write down in the family Happy Book what they say: I want you to recognize it and embrace it.”

Each of my children expressed their sincere gratitude for me and came over and hugged me. Melissa even had her young child say something nice and hug me, and then she also expressed her love and gave me a hug.

I felt extremely validated and supported. Someone saw me and wanted me to feel appreciated. Someone wasn’t going to stand by and let me be treated with disrespect by my children.

I wasn’t doing all the parenting by myself after all. Melissa and I were together, taking care of the children, trying to teach them, being a good team.

If I had been the only parent home that week, things would not have gone so well, I can promise you that. I would have continued to be sad, and I might have lost my temper with the children and just made things worse.

If our husband Joshua had been there, he certainly would have shushed the children to keep the peace and given me moral support later in a private conversation.

But Melissa took it further and worked right then and there to truly change the hearts of the children and let me know how much she supports me.

This is one real-life example of the benefits of a polygamous family.

My children are lucky Melissa is invested in them the way every mother should be invested in her children, and I’m grateful to have her as a co-parent.