Faith, Family, and Failure

There are lots of transitions in marriage that are hard! As if coping to living with another person who puts their toothbrush on the counter and likes to eat way more veggies than you isn’t hard enough, then you get to add other stresses. You get to decide who’s family to see when, what holiday traditions you will celebrate or let go of, what kind of parents you want to be…the list goes on and on. But one of the most crucial- and hardest- transitions in a marriage is having kids. There are many studies that have shown martial satisfaction goes down when a couple starts having kids, and that divorce is significantly more likely to occur between years 2-5, or when people usually start having kids. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Just because your satisfaction is lower doesn’t mean you’re dissatisfied. If I had a kid taking up all my time with their laughs along with their stinky diapers, I would be less satisfied too. But not unhappy.   So how can a couple stay close togethe...

If marriage is one of the most important things we choose to do in this life, preparing for it may seem a little daunting (at least to me). Even if your marriage seems to be a long way away, there are things we can do now to make sure our dating and marriage are both successful. Dating is a huge step towards meeting new people and determining traits you want in a companion. This week in one of my classes we learned about how to relate what dating should be to The Family: A Proclamation to the World. (You can find a link to that document  here .) It was really interesting to me because we made some correlations I never had before. The Family: A Proclamation to the World lays out some pretty cool traits for both men and women. Those of a mother include nurturing and watching over her loved ones. Those of a father include providing for, presiding over, and protecting their loved ones. This can correlate very strongly with the principles of dating. There are three principles of dati...

As a woman in today’s society, I hear many things concerning the inequalities between men and women. Some of those being, “Men and women aren’t allowed to do the same things!” “Men and women aren’t treated the same!” And my personal favorite, “Men and women are not equal in this world.” Well, my answer to that is that men and women are not equal. It’s true. Men can physically do things women cannot do, and vice versa. I can’t run as fast as my brother, and I never will. But, I am naturally more emotionally perceptive than my brother, and he is naturally better at thinking more critically than I am. I’m not saying that women cannot think critically, or men cannot be emotionally perceptive, but there are unique and important differences between the genders that should be celebrated! Saying that men and women can- and should- be the same downplays the beautiful role men and women can both play in this world!    I remember one time I was talking to a good friend and I said some...

It would be interesting to be a newcomer to one of my family parties. I have nine siblings, and while not all live close by, a lot of us still get together regularly and party. If you’ve ever seen While You Were Sleeping , every conversation of ours would be very similar to one they have around their dinner table. One person is in the middle of a conversation, but still pipes up when someone else is talking about another thing in the next room. One second you’re talking about the card game you’re playing, and the next, someone’s dropped a movie reference and everyone joins in to finish the line. But, I know not everyone’s family is this way. I’ve been at a dinner where not a single person says anything until the meal ends and everyone is excused from the table. It felt so foreign to me! I’ve never gone a full meal without movie quoting or talking about some crazy thing that happened during my day. So, why is there such a big difference between families and how they interact? Even wh...

Families vary from person to person, country to country, and even parent to child. Every family situation is different. Because of this, psychologists and researchers have been debating what the best way to explain the family system is for years. But, there is one theory of family that really intrigues me. It’s known as the Family Systems Theory. In a nutshell, it is where each member of the family plays a crucial role in the support and function of the whole unit. My best analogy of this compares the family to a cheesecake. (I probably created this analogy because I love cheesecake...) One person is the crust, another the eggs, cream cheese, vanilla, etc. Without any one of these parts, the cheesecake won’t taste as good. It may still appear to look like a cheesecake, but without the vanilla, for example, it won’t be as tasty as it could be. Sometimes, to create more stability in a family, we have to add subgroups or combinations of “flavors.” For example, let’s say I noticed tha...

                Individualism. It's a word that drives our society. It's a word that  drives us. Individualism    seems to be a worthy desire . It pushes us to be better, to get ahead in our career, and even to love ourselves. But, in the world today, it may also have a toxic undertone that we never realize. Now, you're probably thinking, "What are the downsides to individualism and how does that even relate to family?"  It may not seem like it, but individualism has had as much of a crippling effect on families as it has good. Both marrying and starting families have taken a back seat to many things, the most widely known being financial stability and starting a career. These things, while good and important, have also lead people to believe that companionship and having children are not necessary anymore. The mentality today is that if I can do it by myself, I don’t need anyone else to help me. This kind of thinking has l...

Hello all! My name is Kaitlyn Hayes and I'm just a normal person trying to make it through life with the help of a little failure, a lot of family, and a ton of faith! Welcome to my corner of the world.