The home as a laboratory of love and service

This morning on my very rainy bike ride to work I listened to a talk from general conference (which is a twice yearly meeting for everyone in our church, broadcast via internet and satellite, called “Salvation and Exaltation” by Elder Russel M. Nelson who is an apostle. Salvation, what is often called being saved, which I understand to mean the triumph over death and resurrection is general, universal, but exaltation is personal and family-oriented. Exaltation, or eternal life, which is described as the life of God, being with Him and like Him is what God wants for each of his daughters and sons. This is not an easy thing, even with the atonement of Jesus Christ which makes it possible to repent and return to God we need help in this life, but God has provided support along the way to get us there, specifically the family. He says:
“Individual progression is fostered in the family, which is “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”9 The home is to be God’s laboratory of love and service. There a husband is to love his wife, a wife is to love her husband, and parents and children are to love one another.”
I love this idea of the home being a lab. I recently wrote about iterating on personal plans. Iterating, or doing something several times in order to improve it is one of the basic things that people do in labs. We try different things and see what the result is. We write down what works and what doesn't and why. we keep careful track of things and see results whether they are what we expect or not. I actually work in a research laboratory, and although there are a number of people in my group who mix chemicals, create new lighting and electronic concepts, I do not. Instead I study people, and some of that is based in a laboratory setting. Even though none of us wear white lab coats like you see on TV we're all trying to find out laws and principles of how things work so we can apply them.

So what could it mean that our home is a laboratory of love and service? For me it means much the same thing. Experimenting with love and service to each other. So often with our children we are faced with tough questions. When one is hitting the other or us, what is our reaction? When they are kind and give each other hugs and hold each others hand as we walk around together what can our reactions be? So often we revert to a kind of default setting with our children and try to motivate and change behavior with anger, unhappiness, (fake) sadness, or other things like that. It's pretty easy when your child hits you to ignore it, until it actually hurts, then often I feel like hitting back, or yelling at them. Just to be clear sometimes we do get angry, or yell, put them on tie out, or even hit our children. What we have noticed though is that anger only creates more anger, using hitting is only showing them that hitting works to stop someone for doing something you don't want. Using unhappiness to get your kids to do something seems encourages whining and tantrums (a form of unhappiness) until they get their way. Yelling similarly encourages raising your voice when you want to get your way. We've tried these things, not intentionally mind you, but as a kind of natural reaction (perhaps you've heard of the natural man?)
Instead of this kind of default setting we're experimenting with love in our family.  We started doing this a few months ago explicitly.   We have family rules, and if anyone breaks them there are consequences, this includes us the parents. They are:

1.We listen to mommy and daddy.
2. We are kind to each other.
3. We use words to express our feelings.
4. It is OK to be angry. It is not OK to hurt anyone or our stuff when you’re angry.
5. We use a nice voice to speak.
6. We wait our turn and share.
7. We ask permission before taking something.
8. We use happy voices when we want something.
9. If you need help, ask and pray.
We choose how we want to feel!

We are trying different approaches with our children seeing what love can do for them and for us.  Discipline, of course, is necessary, but doing it in love instead of anger or just wanting things our way totally changes how it feels for both us and for them.  Finding ways to serve and help each other is fun, and brings us together as a family.
The powerful part that we have only done partially is iterating on our plans.  We do make plans for what we want to do as a family.  We talk about them together as part of family councils and family home evenings.  I look forward to the day when we can create our family rules together and have us all decide together what we want to create for ourselves.  Keeping track of the results of not only the rules but how we apply them with each other will help us to see more clearly what kinds of things we are creating for ourselves.
I firmly believe that this life is what we make it.  Given our choices and thoughts we can create a heaven in our homes, or we can create warfare and hell.  So we're experimenting to see what will create heaven in our home.  We'll iterate, and keep trying.  I think we're going to keep better track of our successes and failures and let both of them teach us so we can make things better.
We're tinkering with love, seeing what service brings.  I just love saying that.

So what do you think playing and experimenting with love and service could do in your home, your office, and your life?