Week #5

This week as we discussed some of the things attributed to preparing for marriage I began to think about what I did to prepare for marriage. I am already married so at first I kind of thought that it would be pointless for me to read the chapters on preparing for marriage. I honestly kind of thought that it was too late to do anything about preparing for marriage. Yes, I can't necessarily "prepare" for marriage but I can always prepare to be a better wife and mother, and that is what I really thought about as I studied this section. One thing that stood out to me the most was the definition of love. I don't know exactly how I would define love because it is one of those emotions you just can't put any words to. But, I thought about where I was when I was preparing for getting married. I thought about the kind of love I had at the time for my husband-to-be and though I have only been married for six months I compared it to the love I have for him now. Even in just six months it really has changed dramatically, and I think of how different it will be in years to come. Not that the love I had for him before or even now is bad, it is just different, and it is more. It is so much deeper, and it spreads to all the 4 different areas of the types of love. And I think it is important for me to explore all those areas of love with my husband. And I want it to be that way fifty years from now too.

Week 4

This week our main focus was on gender roles, and importance they play in a family. I really enjoyed this topic because it got me thinking about things I had not necessarily thought to much about before. We read and talked about various differences between males and females. That was very interesting. But the thing that struck me the most was as we addressed the question, "How would my life/family experience be different if I would have been a boy." As I thought about this I though maybe it would not be that different. Because I am second oldest of six children, and the sixth child didn't come for quite a while after me, so most of my life growing up it was just five girls and one boy. Because of this the responsibilities we hard to split between "boy work" and "girl work". I worked outside and did "boy work" and my brother worked inside. I also was encouraged to participate in sports just like my brother. So as I first started thinking about it, I began to think that my experience as a boy would have been pretty much the same. But then I started thinking about it from some different aspects, for example, my relationship with my mother would have been drastically different. I think I felt comfortable confiding in my mother, and talking to her about very personal and sometimes embarrassing things, because she too was a girl and could understand my feelings and what I was going through. There were many things that I experienced that I did not necessarily feel comfortable talking to my dad about, not because he wasn't compassionate and didn't care about me, but because he just wouldn't quite be able to relate or be as responsive or understanding as my mom was in those instances. I think my relationships with my sisters would have been very different too. I think I would have developed many different attributes than I did because I was a girl, and therefore there were different expecations of me because of that.
I also had the chance to talk to my husband about the topic as well. Out of curiosity I asked him one evening if he thought his family experiences would have been different if he would have been a girl. It was very interesting to discuss, and explore the differences in his family, and the different expectations his family had of girls and boys compared to mine. Some were the same, and some were different. It neat to talk about this as it involved into a discussion on why gender is important, and the different roles it plays in a family setting. I loved hearing his ideas and thoughts. This is a conversation we probably would have never had if it weren't for this class. I am so grateful for those things we were able to think about and talk about together.

Week 3

This week I have really thought about my family culture, and some of our family boundaries. While I have never really considered my family "culturally diverse" I have always thought my family to be a typical american family, mostly just like everyone else. However, I have come to understand a new definition of culture I have never really considered before. I began to think about how different my family is from the rest of the families where I grew up just by the fact that we are Latter-Day-Saints. We grew up in an area where there really weren't many LDS families. I was the minority in my high school, and we were the minority in our community. Besides this distinguishing culture of my family, there are several other attributes that I thought of that really make my family distinct. That is that we have a very hardworking ethic that my parents instilled into our family. They also instilled a very strong attribute of service and sacrifice. We have always been taught to put others before ourselves and to seek out opportunities to serve and help those around us, even when we are the ones in need. We also have quiet and mellow culture within us. We don't like to be out of our comort zone and we would rather have one really good friend as opposed to lot's of friends. We don't like the big crowd and huge parties. These are just a few things about my family I have begun to notice whether positive or negative. As well as classify as our own little culture that makes the "Jensen Family" different from other families.

Week 2

One thing that I was really impressed by in this weeks discussions was the theories on family relations. We talked about four mains ones, which were the systems theory, exchange theory, conflict theory and symbolic interaction theory. These were really interesting to me especially looking at how they apply to my family.

I started thinking about the symbolic interaction theory, and how when you've been living with your family your whole life there are so many unspoken rules, and once you go outside of your family at can become so easy to misinterpret words and actions and what not. Often times this can cause conflict.

As I was pondering this idea outside of class, I just had this really neat thought, that often times in marriage this is the cause of a lot of conflict. Because each of you come from different family systems with different unspoken rules, and all these theories apply, and it can be difficult putting them together sometimes. I have noticed this in my marriage. I got married about 5 months ago, and most of the conflicts that have arrised are because are families do things differently, and our interections and relationships with our families were different. One example was in my family my dad always did the grocery shopping, and like many other families, in my husband's family his mom did the grocery shopping. So when we got married, we decided that I would do the grocery shopping, but that was kind of wierd for me. And sometimes he will come with me, and it's weird because I expect him to push the cart, and he expects me to. So there have been a few instances where I started walking away and he starts walking and then is like, "Uh, aren't you going to bring the cart?" and first of all, that cart is like twice my size, he's the big strong man, why can't he push it? Usually I just push it anyway, but when I ask him to push it, he just says, "you're the girl, you're supposed to push it." It is just interesting that in his mind that is a rule, that the girl does the grocery shopping and pushes the cart, and of course in my mind, it's opposite. So that is just a simple example, but it was just interesting to see how most conflicts I have faced and most people face are because they are coming together with two separate ideas of how the family is ran and what not.

Week 1

This week there was one main point that really stood out to me that was touched on a couple times. We talked about how there are spirits that need to come to earth to get bodies, and they will come one way or another. If we don't give them bodies then someone else will. It got me thinking about if I can provide a better life, a better family, a better home than that 15-year-old girl that gets pregnant messing around, that isn't married and that has even less money than me...than what am I waiting for?

One of my classmates in this family relation class raised her hand a made a good point. She said that her sister is married, but plans on never having kids because she feels like she will be a horrible mother. Well what if she would be a bad mother? It got me thinking, is it okay not to have kids if you know you "just aren't cut out to be a mom"? Well...then I remembered something that we talked about in my Doctrine and Covenants class earlier in the week, and that was in regards to foreordination. What it all comes down to is as children of God, we are all foreordained to be mothers and fathers. So while some may seem like they are better at it than others, we all have the capability to become great fathers and mothers, it doesn't mean it will be easy, but it does mean that we have that ability to become such. So, that's not a good excuse afterall.

It's easy to get caught up in the fears of this world, because there are many. But, it is important to remember to always trust in the Lord to guide our decisions, and not put our own selfish desires first. That's what was reinforced to me this last week in class.