Your Name is Safe in Our Home

The first "family rule" that Emily and I set after we got married was "no camping." It's a great rule. Since, we've been invited to go camping several times. We don't have to explain that we don't like sleeping on the ground or eating food with dirt in it. We just say "sorry, that's against our family rule." Surprisingly, most people let it go at that. The exception was my dad, who argued with me for about 5 minutes about whether we did, in fact, have a family rule about camping. I won in the end, of course.

Yesterday we attended the Andersens' ward. One of the talks was about gossip and so for family home evening we discussed how our family could apply the principles. After much deliberation, we set a new family rule:

"Your name is safe in our home."

I'm very excited about this opportunity to improve in this dimension. Gossip can be carnally satisfying, but it is a completely destructive form of communication. It does nothing for the spreaders and less for the targets. Emily and I decided on the following course of action to apply our new rule:

1. We will give silent and loving cues to each other as reminders to not speak ill of others.
2. We will not engage gossipers. Even seemingly benign responses like "that's too bad" or "oh" can encourage the blabbing. Instead, we will either completely disengage (by leaving the room) or we will attempt to change the subject.
   
3. We wish to defend our loved ones when they are disparaged in our presence. We do not, however, want to begin a contentious interchange nor humiliate the gossiper. Therefore, when we hear someone maligned, we will counter with a sincere compliment and attempt to change the subject. For example
   
   

   "That Jimmy is so obnoxious. I hate the way he combs his hair."
   "You know, Jim is so funny. He always makes me laugh. Hey, by the way, did you hear about the index of leading economic indicators? Isn't that interesting?"