“What do l do when I feel I can’t communicate with my bishop or my parents?” New Era, Oct. 1974, 19
“What do l do when I feel I can’t communicate with my bishop or my parents?”
Answer/Brother David Pierpont Gardner
Have a long conversation with yourself! Search out and understand your feelings in the matter through prayer and careful thought. “Men build too many walls and not enough bridges,” Sir Isaac Newton once said. Which have you built between you and your parents, you and your bishop? If a wall, tear it down and the eager hands of others will soon join you in the task. If a bridge, cross over and you will meet others coming your way.
The burden, of course, may not be yours alone. Men are not perfect; neither are parents or bishops. “All men have their frailties,” Cyrus reminds us, “and whoever looks for a friend without imperfections, will never find what he seeks. We love ourselves notwithstanding our faults, and we ought to love our friends in like manner.”
Were you to tell your parents and bishop that you feel unable to communicate with them, what do you think their reaction would be? The telling itself may provoke a discussion between you, long desired but long inhibited; or it may ease the restraining influence of earlier misunderstandings, irritations, and run-of-the-mill pettiness that so often throw up barriers between people; or it may relieve the tension between you, brought on because of pride or ill feelings or criticism harbored by one or the other of you.
Your efforts, of course, may accomplish little or nothing at all. What then? Seek help from others—friends, brothers and sisters, school counselors, teachers, other adults in the ward or neighborhood whom you respect and in whom you can confide. Seek help from your Heavenly Father through prayer and righteous living, for his help is assured and his guidance promised if you are but in tune. And if you are in tune with him, then surely not much time will pass before you are also in tune with others, parents and bishops included.