what matters most

I think for this last blog entry I want to talk about family. If anything, the biggest thing I have learned in my life is that family is the most important thing we have. I'm positive that is why God created families for us to come down to and to learn and love each other. We can not progress in this life without the help of our family. It is so important to me that I raise my family in a loving home where my kids know I love them. I didn't grow up with this myself. Growing up my parents were separated quite often, always coming back together in the end. After 16 years of marriage with on again/ off again, they decided to get a divorce. This was a hard ting for my sister and me to experience, but something that taught me the value and importance of having a strong, loving, happy family. Sometimes I am scared of the unknown future of my husband and mine's relationship, but then i always find comfort that if we really love each other and turn to the lord He will help us overcome anything. Our families are like a muscle: if we work that muscle and do our best to strengthen it with healthy activities, then that muscle will be strong in the end.
I think we all just need to step back from our busy lives to see our family as being the most precious thing and then invest our time treating it as such. It will be more than worth it in the end.

Parenting

Parenting is something we will all be affected by in some way or another: we will wither become parents ourselves or have been parented in the past. Parenting is not just a matter of getting our children to comply to us and our needs/wants as adults, but is rather a process for us to act on the needs of children. The needs of children can be placed into 5 categories:

1. The need for contact

2. The need of belonging

3. The need for protection

4. the need to withdraw

5. the need for challenge

As we parent, these are the areas we need to be looking at when a child acts out or seems to be "misbehaving". We have the responsibility to teach our children right verses wrong and help build their character, we are not parents to just police their good and bad behavior. We do not teach kids to behave, rather we teach them how to build character. Character can be built as we address  the apparent needs of the child. As we address those needs we won't need to chase around their behavior because as their needs are met they will naturally be happier and more willing to abide by rules of the house. 

We as parents have a sacred responsibility to parent those spirits in which our Father in heaven trusts to teach and guide His children to learn truth and build character. 

gratitude.

This has been a very relaxing week for me: no school, not too much homework, and getting to hang out with my family always makes for a happy time. This week was all about thankfulness an the things that we have that we are thankful for. There are so many things that I have to be grateful for this year: successful surgery, marrying the man of  my dreams, and returning home from an honorable mission in the Philippines.

I the act of being grateful, It has caused me to be more grateful for these things not just around this time of year, but all times of the year, especially for my husband. One day he is going to be the father of our little runts and I want him to know how much gratitude and appreciation that I'll have for him. It seems as if sometimes the men in our lives don't get the right amount of appreciation that they deserve, especially those who are active fathers. I know that as I show more gratitude for him and the role he plays in our family, the better man he will continue to be. Guys need that sense of security as well and we can give that to them in many ways: 

1. helping them see the big picture and realizing that there are vital and important

2. Show appreciation often and validating their feelings as real. 

3. Tell him you love him and kiss him. 

4. accept his goodness and compliments

 And the list could go on and on.

But we are women have a powerful influence on the men in our lives. So be that woman for good: help you brother, husband, friend, dad, or grandfather to help him see the great inside of him. 

Not who is right, but what is right.

This week has there has been a lot of eye opening experiences from the time I have spent in class. If anything, my heart and love go out to Brother Williams during this trial that has come up. And I gladly give my support to him at this time. We all need to have to courage to share our opinions and what we know to be true to help strengthen others, even if some will not agree with what we do. So don't be shy, SHARE YOUR OPINION BECAUSE IT MATTERS!
 I feel that leads me into my next topic of communication when conflicts arise. If we are too shy or scared to hurt someone's feelings or that we will be judged for feeling or thinking a certain way, that problem will never be solved. It takes to people being open and honest with each other to fix problems and solve conflict effectively.
 I always thought that conflicts were mostly solved by using a compromise that would help both parties of the marriage to get what they want. this may work, but what about the third party of your marriage? That's right, what about God? Healthy marriages have a husband and wife who don't compromise but rather come to a consensus together, that is both knowing really what the right thing is that need to be done. Its not a matter of who is right, its a matter of counseling together and with the lord to find what it is that is right. It may be something like what car to buy, when to have kids, what the right way to end an argument is. They may be little things but they may also be the little things in our life that we counsel with the lord to know the right thing that need to be done. god may no necessarily car what car you buy, but I feel that he cars about you and your family and he will help in the process to know the best thing that will help your family.
 I know that as we do this with all conflicts, trials, and decisions that need to ne made, you will be guided to know exactly what is right. he won't let you done.

Be prepared!

This is always the first thing that come to my mind about preparedness. Scare took into account that he needed to prepare for future event if he wanted the outcome to be as he wished. Even though this was written in a negative connotation, I feel we can still draw positive skills of preparedness from the example and have a little fun while doing it. 

 There are going to be things that will come up unexpectedly though out our journey here in this strange world. There will be crisis or trials such as death, illness, divorce, miscarriage, unemployment, etc. no one is exempt from experiencing some kind of trial. So with that being said, we need to prepare ourselves individually and as a family unit for when those will occur. We have to prepare to protect the integrity of our families. 

 Here are some ideas that I have come up with to prepare your family for those unexpected events:

  1. Families should counsel with each other on a regular basis, even when big problems haven't yet risen, to form positive patterns of communication. If you can't talk about the little things in your family, how do you expect to talk about the big things together when they occur. 

  2. Stay spiritually connected. No matter what your religion is, God can and will help in your times of need. Look for ways to strengthen spirituality. 

  3. Take the time to focus now on creating strong relationships with your spouse and your children. When trial arises, that love sill needs to be felt across the board to make it through. 

  4, Family systems and boundaries should be established now to help reinforce where boundaries still lie when trouble brews. An example of this should be proper information staying with in the system of husband and wife and what is appropriate to share with other family member or with your children. It is also easier for spouses to lean on each other in times of need when that bond has already been formed. 

  5. Look for good habits of stress relief such as exercise, writing, cooking/baking, etc., whatever it is that helps relief stress and start those habits now. 

I know that as we prepare our families now for those hardships that will come unexpectedly, we can find peace that we will make it through. When those troubling times come, we can stand strong together as a family instead of being pulled apart and distanced from each other. 

Boundaries

I have heard it from friends of mine who have been married for a while and the tale is that as soon as you are married, you have no friends anymore. I have heard so many of my friends say this about a month or so after they first got married. At first my reaction was "well maybe that's because they were just spending too much time with each other and not keeping those friendships close." Which could be true, but I've recently seen really why so many people are saying when you get married you lose all of your friends: it is because as a married couple you are now setting boundaries for the friends you do have. It is very important that our friends are outside of the husband/wife boundary after married and i might say even when courting and being engaged. We need boundaries that will reassure the fidelity we have to each other as husbands and wives. It should be our husbands or wives that we look to to talk about our fears, things we are worried about, and goals that we want to share together. If as a married person, we remain very close with our friends we can start to create other emotional connections that can damage our marriage. It may be easy to "vent" to your girl friends or the guys about the stupid things our spouse does that just irritates the crap out of us. But venting should only be for dryers and  rice cookers. When we vent to other about our relationship it can plant a negative connotation in their minds of our significant other which can cause many problems in the future. If we continue to have close emotional relationships with friends other than our spouse, we can create such strong emotional bonds that can and will lead to romantic feelings and a chance for affairs to happen that bring much pain and suffering.
THESE BOUNDARIES NEED TO BE SET TO PROTECT THE MARRIAGE.  Christ taught this very thing in Matthew when he taught of  marriage:

 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall ^acleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?

(St Matthew 19:5)

Christ himself taught that we need to do all we can to have boundaries in our marriages that will keep fidelity in our marriages. In my opinion it is not that we loose our friends when we get married, but that we are more cautious when it comes to keeping our marriages strong and be the most rewarding.

Home for the holidays

In class this week we talked a lot about adjustments or challenges that couple will face in the first month of their marriage, first year, and first child. One of the things brought up was holidays, especially when Christmas comes around. For a newly married couple this can cause lots of stress of wanting to spend equal amounts of time with all sides of the family and could leave other sides with feelings of resentment for not spending as much time with them or not being able to see all sides at all. But maybe its not too bad of an idea for a married couple to just do Holidays for themselves the first couple years of their marriage. If a couple goes back home for Christmas to visit the husbands side, it creates an atmosphere where he is put back into the role of child again. This can cause problems because his current role is husband, provider, and preside er. This can go the same way for the wife, to slip back into roles that may exclude the spouse in certain ways. May I suggest that it may be very healthy for a couple to spend the holidays just the two of them. This gives them my opportunities to create their own traditions for their future family. This also gives time for them to bond even more, talk about important things in their life, and give time for them to set goals together.  Now I am not saying that it would bad their relationship to spend some time with family around the holidays because those relationships are very important. What I am saying is that a newly couple really needs to do what is best for them the first couple of years so they can do all they can to build a strong relationship between the two of them. It is not something that should be taken personally, but something that should be looked at from the position of the new couple. The holidays are a great time for new couples to focus on their relationship and what they can do to make things that much more satisfying and rewarding in their marriage.