Try to help your wife in the conflict before her. Be careful of your words, cultivate refinement of manners, courtesy, gentleness, and you will be rewarded for so doing.
(2T 84.1)
MC
VC
From what was shown me, there is a great work to be accomplished for you before you can be accepted in the sight of God. Self is too prominent. You possess a hasty, passionate temper, and are arbitrary and overbearing in your family. Sister M is slack and untidy in her house. She has not the elements of order and neatness in her organization. Yet she can improve in these things. Brother M, you censure your wife, you are dictatorial, and do not have that love which you should have. She dreads your oppressive spirit, but does not do what she might to correct her wrong habits, which make home distasteful and disagreeable.
(2T 84.2)
MC
VC
Brother M, you have not taken a judicious course with your family. Your children do not love you. They have more hatred than love. Your wife does not love you. You do not take a course to be loved. You are an extremist. You are severe, exacting, arbitrary, to your children. You talk the truth to them, but do not carry its principles into your everyday life. You are not patient, forbearing, and forgiving. You have so long indulged your own spirit, you are so ready to fly into a passion if provoked, that it looks exceedingly doubtful whether you will make efforts sufficient to meet the mind of Christ. You do not possess the power of endurance, forbearance, gentleness, and love. These Christian graces must be possessed by you before you can be truly a Christian. You reserve your encouraging words, your kindly acts, for those who are not entitled to them as much as your own wife and children. Cultivate kind words, pleasant looks, praise, and approbation for your own family, for this will materially affect your happiness. Never let censure or fretful words escape your lips. Subdue this desire to rule and to place your iron heel wherever you can. You possess a most disagreeable spirit, a close spirit. With some you are selfish and stingy; for others whom you wish to think highly of you, you would sacrifice anything, even the very things your own family need. You are liberal in these cases that you may have the praise and esteem of men. If you could purchase heaven by a great sacrifice for those to whom you choose to be liberal, you would certainly obtain it. You do not object to being put to the greatest inconvenience to advantage others, if in so doing you can exalt yourself. In these things you tithe mint and rue, while you neglect the weightier matters, justice and the love of God.
(2T 84.3)
MC
VC
Last June I was shown that there is a work before you to correct your ways. You do not see yourself. Your life has been a mistake. You do not pursue a wise and merciful course in your family. You are exacting. If you continue to pursue the course that you have been pursuing toward your wife and children, her days will be shortened, and your children will fear, but not love, you. You feel that your course is in Christian wisdom, but in this you deceive yourself.
(2T 253.1)
MC
VC
You have peculiar views in regard to managing your family. You exercise an independent, arbitrary power which permits no liberty of will around you. You think yourself sufficient to be head in your family, and feel that your head is sufficient to move every member, as a machine is moved in the hands of the workmen. You dictate and assume authority. This displeases Heaven and grieves the pitying angels. You have conducted yourself in your family as though you alone were capable of self-government. It has offended you that your wife should venture to oppose your opinion or question your decisions.
(2T 253.2)
MC
VC
After much long-suffering on her part, and patient waiting upon your whims, she has rebelled against unjust authority, and has become nervous and distracted, and shown contempt for your course. You have made the most of these manifestations on her part, and have charged her with sin and being led by the spirit of the devil, when you were the one at fault. You drove her almost to desperation, and afterward taunted her with it. How easy it would have been for you to have made her life cheerful and pleasant. But it has been the opposite of this.
(2T 253.3)
MC
VC