The importance of Marriage!

Our class discussion today made me really think about how the world views marriage and its importance and how the gospel views marriage and its importance. The world see's it as an opportunity to come together. The gospel see's it as a way to come together with God.  It is so easy, even in a gospel environment to consider booking your reception area before booking your temple ceremony. If we truely understood the importance of those covenants, commitments, and promises we were making in the temple that would be where our focus was. It's not to say that we should not care about the reception, the wedding cake, the company. Those are important. However, maintaining an eternal perspective through it all and WHY you're getting married in the temple is the most important thing we need to remember. As we remember WHY we're getting married,How it is part of fulfilling the creator's plan, and What this life is all about!

What is Love?

Today in class we learned about the different types of love that we can have. Its interesting to know that having a well balanced love for all of those who are within our social influence is so very important. It would be ideal to have all of the different loves in the same measure and amount for each person. After discussing this topic in class I reflected on the importance of the 1st great commandment God gave- it had to do with love. I found a talk given by Dieter F. Uchtdorf afterwards that inspired me to understand why it is so important to have love, express love, and show love. Especially in our families.

"Because love is the great commandment, it ought to be at the center of all and everything we do in our own family, in our Church callings, and in our livelihood. Love is the healing balm that repairs rifts in personal and family relationships. It is the bond that unites families, communities, and nations. Love is the power that initiates friendship, tolerance, civility, and respect. It is the source that overcomes divisiveness and hate. Love is the fire that warms our lives with unparalleled joy and divine hope. Love should be our walk and our talk." -Dieter F. Uchtdorf "The Love of God"

What influences you?

Today in the readings and discussion I was impressed to see that the three major sources of how we learn what it means to be masculine or feminine were through family, school, and mass media. It is true that mothers and fathers have a huge influence on what a typical girl is suppose to wear, how to act, and what to say and same for men. If a father is into body building and the looks of his image, you can assume that the son will follow in those same footsteps. If the mother is involved in plastic surgeries, weight loss, and looking glamorous, you can bet the girl will follow her mothers example in that area as well. This main source made me reflect on a past conference talk by jeffrey r holland when he stated this:

"In this same vein may I address an even more sensitive subject. I plead with you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short. Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time or other wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenage girls said: "You can't live your life worrying that the world is staring at you. When you let people's opinions make you self-conscious you give away your power. . . . The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen to your inner self—[the real you.]"⁸ And in the kingdom of God, the real you is "more precious than rubies."⁹ Every young woman is a child of destiny and every adult woman a powerful force for good. I mention adult women because, sisters, you are our greatest examples and resource for these young women. And if you are obsessing over being a size 2, you won't be very surprised when your daughter or the Mia Maid in your class does the same and makes herself physically ill trying to accomplish it. We should all be as fit as we can be—that's good Word of Wisdom doctrine. That means eating right and exercising and helping our bodies function at their optimum strength. We could probably all do better in that regard. But I speak here of optimum health; there is no universal optimum size.

Frankly, the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You are bombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisements with the message that looks are everything! The pitch is, "If your looks are good enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy and popular." That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to say nothing of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being done to the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing of superficial) standard. As one Hollywood actress is reported to have said recently: "We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth. . . . I’m really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in search of that. I see women [including young women] . . . pulling this up and tucking that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can't get off of it.] . . . It’s really insane . . . what society is doing to women."¹⁰

In terms of preoccupation with self and a fixation on the physical, this is more than social insanity; it is spiritually destructive, and it accounts for much of the unhappiness women, including young women, face in the modern world. And if adults are preoccupied with appearance—tucking and nipping and implanting and remodeling everything that can be remodeled—those pressures and anxieties will certainly seep through to children. At some point the problem becomes what the Book of Mormon called "vain imaginations."¹¹ And in secular society both vanity and imagination run wild. One would truly need a great and spacious makeup kit to compete with beauty as portrayed in media all around us. Yet at the end of the day there would still be those "in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers" as Lehi saw,¹² because however much one tries in the world of glamour and fashion, it will never be glamorous enough."

I know that just as women as we follow the example and counsel of our prophets it won't matter what the media, our friends, or the world says about our image, we know who we are and what we can become.

Family Culture

As I reflected on our discussion in class I thought it was so interesting how different my family culture is compared to the family culture that my parents were both raised. The differences in these two family cultures were in family education, religious activity, showing and expressing love, communication and the role of each gender. I feel like there is also some similarities but I would say our family differences in how my parents were raised far outweigh how my parents have raised us. I was also very impressed by the topic of how marriages work for the world and how marriages work under covenants. When the question was posed "who do you make covenants with across the altar?" You make them with God not only with your partner as you do in the world. I think that this is one of the major cultural differences that seperate my parents culture with how they were raised opposed to how they raised us and the expectations they have. The statement was made that if we make covenants with just our spouse when we get married (outside the temple) and that spouse fails in his or her commitment then the foundation of that marriage is just short of failure. Compare that to a marriage whose covenants are with God.. someone that is unchanging, constant, and always honest in his commitment to you... You can never fail!!!!

Cultures!!!

I was very intrigued about what I learned about as far as  different cultures go and how they affect the family. What I really thought about was how does a couple effectively and agreeably compromise on what they want to be their own "Family culture"? You have two people coming from two seperate backgrounds, cultures, values, habits, and ideas and to make an effort to put those two together to mold it as one is quite the challenge. It made me reflect on how important it is to create not only the culture that you and your husband feel most comfortable with for your relationships and for your children, but also how important it is to create a culture that Heavenly Father himself creates for those he lives with. How do we do this? This is the question I think that I will find many answers to throughout the semester in order to better be prepared to compromise, consider, and compare the positive and negatives qualities that should be in a family culture centered on the teachings of Jesus Christ.