The relationship between me and my family members has changed a lot for me throughout the years. I remember that my relationship with my older brother was horrible because we fought all the time and never could see eye to eye. My older sister always stayed to herself (partly because me and my brother was so different, she never wanted to take sides). My relationship with both of my parents was an unfamiliar one, they were the authority that I listened to and had to respect and was expected to love, because they were not home all that much and I especially felt like I didn’t know my father. And as a result of all of this, I know that I made not the best decisions as a youth, because I didn’t receive that kind of guidance from the God given helpers that I had. They, just like every parent and family is for an individual, were my foundation. And if that foundation doesn’t get taken care of, cracks start to form, and eventually the foundation falls… and so does that individual.

The reason why I say all of these things, is because this family dynamic that I had changed as we moved to a new state (due to my father’s job), away from the rest of my family (so all we had was each other) and my mom didn’t have to work anymore so she stayed home with us as we went though school. Which was the biggest blessing ever. I can see, almost immediately, the effect that these changes had on my family because we became closer together. As my mother started focusing more on fulling our needs as a family, she helped bring us all together as she applied family councils. Because of some beef that me and my brother had in the past, we still never really got along. My sister still stayed to herself, my brother still had anger issues and I was a huge mess because I was being bullied in high school. And plus, my dad was spending so much time away from us as a family. But my mother knew so much better than us, she knew something needed to change in our family and she turned to doing family councils every night after our family did Family Home evening together. In these councils we discussed our week, talked about our worries, stresses, maybe what we learned, what we were going to do that week (relating to school, sports, performances, jobs, church activities). We were able to settle our differences and were able to all get on the same page. I found out how my family members were stressed out in their daily lives, what bothered them and how I can change to help them. They also listened to me and the things that were bothering me. We all agreed to work on what we needed to change as individuals to help our family at this stressful time in our lives.

I noticed that my brother began to try harder, our communication was now opened that we could talk to each other about our feelings rather than be enemies and fight each other all the time. My dad began to spend less time at work and more time with us. I began to develop the best relationship with my dad. We are now the bestest of friends and I understand him and what he goes through. I help him by making him laugh… I would have never known half of the things I know about my family members if it wasn’t for having family councils. Which opened the door of communication for us and seriously helped our relationship as a family. This is something that has saved my relationship with my family, and it is something I highly recommend for all families.