Tough Love

"I remember vividly the dreadful circumstance into which a young lady had managed to fall several years ago. She was not a BYU student but was a Latter-day Saint, and yet her very life seemed to be disintegrating before our eyes. As a result of trying to play with the net down, trying to live without rules and without restraint, she was experiencing the moral and spiritual stupefaction of a broken marriage, illicit moral behavior, dark drug abuse, and finally physical violence. She was descending into a personal hell from which no one seemed to be able to retrieve her and from which she personally did not have the wish or the will to turn away.

Her mother and others who had great concern for her had been in contact with me. Her Church leaders had tried to help. All seemed to no avail. The weeks became months, and human life unraveled before our eyes.

Then something happened. A lifelong friend of this young woman contacted her and tried, with love, to open her eyes and touch her heart. When neither her eyes nor her heart seemed to be yielding, this friend, this sister in the family of God who understood Paul's reminder that when one member suffers all suffer with it, grabbed the lapels of her friend's heavy winter coat and shook it with all her might. She shook her with all the strength her 105 pounds could muster, and, sobbing, she said through her tears, "Look at yourself. Don't you see what you are becoming? Look at yourself! I can't stand it anymore. I love you, and you're breaking my heart." At that she let go of the lapels of the big heavy coat and with tears streaming from her eyes turned and ran away.

The young lady whose life was in such jeopardy later recalled for me her response to that encounter. She said, "I don't know exactly what happened in that moment. Perhaps I am not likely ever to know. I had been talked to by many people, and little of it had meant anything to me. But if I live to be a hundred, I will never forget what I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears as this my childhood friend looked at me with utter anguish and screamed into my soul, "I love you, and you are breaking my heart."

Today that girl is the beautiful, happy, safe, and productive young woman which she once had been and which surely God meant her to be. She has been remarkably successful in a graduate program at a very good university. She is fully active in the Church, and she is devoted to a life of responsibility and respectability—all because someone in her own way said at the right time and with the right intent that whatever disappointments there had been, these two were forever sisters and disciples of Christ. That stunning declaration not only changed a life, but it quite literally saved this one. We need such brothers and sisters nearby us."  -Jeffry R. Holland, The Demands of Discipleship

I have been thinking a lot lately about the different ways that we try to help those around us who are struggling. I have come to the conclusion that there are two main ways to approach help people: coddling and tough love. Often, because we don't want to hurt people, because we want them to like us and to not think we are attacking them, or because we're afraid of losing their friendship, we coddle. In many cases, however, I have noticed that while coddling is great at first, what lots of people need is a wake-up call. They don't need someone who will sit and dwell over all their problems with them all day long, they need someone who will tell them to knock it off and help them to fix their problems. Of course, it should be done with love. Of course we should try to understand and sympathize. But I believe that sometimes the best way to show that we love is to expect the best of our friends and to let them know when they're falling. Then, once they come to themselves, we can do everything within our power to lift them back up. Yes--I'm a firm believer in tough love.