Healing Power of Family History

I have diagnosed anxiety. Its fun. (That's sarcasm.) During different times in my life it becomes easier to handle, and harder to handle. When COVID first hit, yup, you guessed it; it exploded. I was trying to find anything to help me calm down and ended up doing a search in LDS tool simply for- Healing.

What I find amazing/ ironic/ inspired, is that the first talk I somehow decided to read, was by Dale G Renlund called Family History and Temple Work: Sealing and Healing.

Yeah I was skeptical. How on EARTH did those two things go together?

SISTERS.

They go together.

How, I still do not really understand. But I will tell you. I read the talk and loved it. And, embarrassing to admit, for the first time in my life I thought hey, maybe I should do some Family History. I dedicated an hour every Sunday to work on it.

I am not good. Or amazing. I am still trying to figure it out. But sisters it WORKS. No my anxiety is not gone, or even perfect. But it helped. It brought the spirit into my life. I helped me feel the love and spirit and the STRENGTH of those who are a part of me.

As a ward, and as a Relief Society, we want to encourage you more to do family history. With that we are going to try posting and linking you to very basic how to videos. For me, part of what had stopped me in the past, was that I had no idea how to do it. And I didn't have a good time to find someone to ask. (Either way too early or way too late.)

So we are going to hook you up.

But before we did that I wanted to start with this. The spirit of WHY we do this. There are lots of reasons why, and we will probably explore more, but this was the one that was near and dear to my heart and I wanted to share it.

Below are some highlights from Dale G Renlunds talk and I linked the talk at the talk so you can read it in full. Do. Its fantastic.

When God directs us to do one thing, He often has many purposes in mind. Family history and temple work is not only for the dead but blesses the living as well. For Orson and Parley, it turned their hearts to each other. Family history and temple work provided the power to heal that which needed healing.

But as we participate in family history and temple work today, we also lay claim to “healing” blessings promised by prophets and apostles.⁶ These blessings are also breathtakingly amazing because of their scope, specificity, and consequence in mortality. This long list includes these blessings:

• Increased influence of the Holy Ghost⁷ to feel strength and direction for our own lives;

• Increased faith, so that conversion to the Savior becomes deep and abiding

• Increased joy through an increased ability to feel the love of the Lord;

• Increased family blessings, no matter our current, past, or future family situation or how imperfect our family tree may be;

• Increased love and appreciation for ancestors and living relatives, so we no longer feel alone;

• Increased assistance to mend troubled, broken, or anxious hearts and make the wounded whole.⁹

If you have prayed for any of these blessings, participate in family history and temple work. As you do so, your prayers will be answered. When ordinances are performed on behalf of the deceased, God’s children on earth are healed.

President Russell M. Nelson, however, cautioned: “We can be inspired all day long about temple and family history experiences others have had. But we must do something to actually experience the joy ourselves.” He continued, “I invite you to prayerfully consider what kind of sacrifice—preferably a sacrifice of time—you can make [to] do more temple and family history work.”¹⁷