Marriage, Are You Ready?

     "It seems to me that some people spend more time planning the wedding then they do their marriage." John Bytheway said that. How many times have we seen that? The wedding only lasts a day, but you marriage should last forever. So why do we put all of the time and energy before the wedding day into that one day and not plan for all the days that follow that?
     But how in the world do we prepare for marriage? I am going to be taking some pointers from a talk given by Kenneth W. Matheson titled "But I Thought Husbands Took Out The Garbage!" In it he says that the following are needed for a successful marriage;
1. Before trying to reconcile expectations, recognize that not all differences are bad. 

2. A useful way to clarify expectation is to write them down. List expectations according their importance.
3. Identify those expectations that you will not change.
4. After you and your sweetheart have prepared your lists, discuss them positively. As you talk, ask yourself the following questions: Are you as interested in understanding what he or she has to say as you are in explaining yourself? Do you view many of your expectations as flexible? Do you understand that expectations in such a discussion are not demands? Remember that even serious differences in many expectations can be worked out.
     Now these are just a few things that were sugested in this talk and I recommend reading the rest of it, but I just want to make something clear before I end. All of my previous blog posts have been about keeping marriage a sacred thing. Do not treat it cheaply or disregard it. It is not to be treated as anything, but the most valued possession. In order make sure that that possession stays beautiful we must prepare for it.

Kenneth W. Matheson's full talk

The Controversy of Gender

     Here is a riddle for you: A father and son got in a car accident together and were rushed to the hospital. They were put in an adjoining room with a curtain running down the middle. The son needed to have surgery and when the doctors came into the room one spoke up and said, "I can't operate on him, he is my son." How can this be?

     With this entry I might lose some people, but I want to speak up on it anyway. Before we go any further I want you all to know that I believe that gender is a huge determination about the structure of a human being. I believe that God does NOT make mistakes and that the way you were born is how you were born and that was no mistake. God didn't just slip up a couple of times or get sloppy. If we believe that God is truly a perfect being then you were made how He wanted you to be. 

     I also strongly and firmly believe in loving everyone no matter what. I believe in loving the sinner and hating the sin. Do not assume or take from this that I am an extremist or a hater of anybody. There are questions that I just don't have the answer for like why some people are attracted to their same gender, but I know that marriage should be between a man and a woman. 

     There is also big questions about girls that are tom-boys and guys that are feminine. Well in one of my classes my professor asked the girls to list out some things that they want in their ideal man. The list included things like; sensitive, caring, creative, passionate, well dressed and compassionate. Well to me that sounded a lot like some men claiming to be feminine or even gay. There is nothing wrong with any of these traits, in fact they are what attracts women to men.
      My professor also has been confronted by gay couples that say, "Why do you even care how we live, it's not like it's effecting anybody else!" fududududududuh! For every gay man couple there are 2 women in the world that will be robbed of the experience of being loved by her husband, to have children and to grow old with her family. What a sad consequence. Even though I do not wish to trample on anybody's beliefs or rights I will not apologize for my view that gender was given to us as a gift from God and that it is a part of us. 

     I will not look down on those who have a difference of opinion then me and I only wish to be treated with the same respect.

Answer to the riddle: The doctor was the boys mother. If you had a hard time figuring this out it is because your brain wouldn't let you figure that the doctor was a woman. What does this have to do with gender roles? Everything! Just because we are different genders doesn't mean we are not equal. On things like our careers it doesn't matter with gender, but in life we need each other. We need each other to survive, to grow, to learn and to continue life. So so important!!!

Battle of the Classes

     Oh how I hate this frame of mind...Societies Classes. You have the rich, the poor, the upper middle class, the lower middle class. Ok, aren't we trying to leave high school back in our awkward teenage years? Why do grown ups still go for the whole "click" mentality; these are the jocks, these are the nerds, these are the popular. Gross! So I totally get that people make different amounts of money and that makes it so we all live different styles of life, but aren't people turning the world upside down trying to make it so we are all the same? Why should social classes be different. 

     How I see it is that we are all God's children and we will stand before Him according to Revelation 20:12 "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." 

     I will admit that we all have different likes, dislikes and styles of living, but the fact is is that we can all mingle together. I'm not talking about mingling; the type where the rich go and feed the poor and do their service project for the year at Thanksgiving, but where we connect with one another. Go start up a conversation with someone, go put yourself out there. DO SOMETHING!!!

     I'm not telling you guys to go do something that I have never done. I served a mission for my church in the great state of New Jersey for 18 months where I talked and taught people from all over the social ladder and guess what, I could connect with each of them. Strange right?! I continue to practice this now that I'm home in Idaho and I have never been happier because I realize that I am not alone. No matter where you sit on this invisible ladder, connect with others and that ladder won't seem to matter so much any more.

Compared to a What?

Don't you just love comparisons? We use them every day like when you taste something delicious and you say "This tastes just like Grandma's cooking!" or when you tell your sister she is lookin' like Sarah Jessica Parker in the dress. Just like all of these the family can be compared to so many things, but why would we want to compare the family to anything at all? 

     Well, I thought the exact same thing when one of my professors in collage asked us to write a whole paper comparing the family to a working unit. I racked my brain thinking of things like a baking cookies where dad is the flour, mom is the sugar and my sisters are the nuts....I of course was the chocolate chips. 

     But none of these seemed to fit. Well I decided on a Christmas tree, why? Because I LOVE Christmas!!! My dad was the actual tree being the firm guy he is, my mom was the angel on top watching over all of us, one of my sisters was the lights providing the glow in our family and my other sister was the ornaments because she is can be so different but she sets the mood for the whole family. I was the presents...just because I love them.

     So what did this prove? Well as I dove deeper into what each person in my family does to contribute to our family I realized that not only are each persons contributions vital, they also provide essential "breaths of life" if you will to our individual family unit. If the family is truly a working unit then it has the potential to be a total rock in society as well as for the individuals in that family. Let me ask you, your family is compared to a what?

Not Tarnished!

     Ok, I'm going to be totally honest with you guys, this is my first blog and I really don't know what I'm doing yet, but what I do know is that I have a definite opinion about the family. We always talk about "the family" like it's more of an object then a unit, but I actually want to take a look at it at that angle for a second. 

     I do want to say first that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I will be quoting many members of my faith such as the document at the top of my blog titled, "The Family: A Proclamation To The World."  But I will also quote those not of my faith as well. 

     Having said that, I would like to share a quote from F. Burton Howard who is a member of the Quorum of the 70 meaning he is one of the leaders in the LDS church. Concerning marriage he said, "If you want something to last forever, you treat it differently. You shield it and protect it. You never about it. You don't expose it to the elements. You don't make it common or ordinary. If it ever becomes tarnished, you lovingly polish it until it gleams like new. It becomes special because you have made it so, and it grows more beautiful and precious as time goes by." 

     I love this comparison to marriage. Too often in today's society we see marriage as something cheep and easily disposable. But the family is too precious of a unit to become so belittled and so tarnished with these labels. Instead we need to change our view point. Let's start to look at the family as something worthy of fighting for.

 F. Burton Howard's full talk
The Family: A Proclamation to the World