Faith, Family, and Failure

I am super super excited to talk about active parents because it is something that blessed my life so much growing up. I had parents who taught me to own up to every choice I made, whether good or bad. They balanced very well (in my opinion) accountability and respect when disciplining their children. I hope to be able to be even half as supportive to my children when I’m a parent. Active parenting comes when parents are involved in the welfare of their child. They want their children to succeed and be able to be accountable for their own growth and future! The biggest example of active parenting that comes to my mind is teaching children how to work. There are countless times that I have been able to work side-by-side with my parents and learn a good work ethic. It wasn’t always fun. I didn’t always like it. In fact, I rarely appreciated it while it was happening, but afterwards felt the incredible influence my parents had had on me in creating a value for work.  For example, I...

I have been able to see the importance of fathers very starkly while growing up. A lot of my friends didn’t have fathers in their lives, whether because of divorce, death, or other circumstances. I was able to get a glimpse at the importance of my own father in my personal development. Like many fathers, mine was the main disciplinary figure in the family. If something needed to be fixed, he was there to point it out and put us back on the right path. I didn’t always like that, but he taught us to value others, especially my momma. All of us kids grew to have a deep love and respect for her, and the answer in my house to any question my mom had was “Yes ma’am momma.” Haha I will always be grateful I was taught that respect from my father at a young age. Another important role fathers play is to interact and spend wholesome time with their children. Some of my fondest memories growing up are doing things with my dad, like going camping, playing football in the front yard, or my all-t...

Ask anyone who knows me well, and they will tell you I don’t do confrontation. Even when I was little, I tried to be the peacemaker in the family. Conflict really makes me uncomfortable in any situation. If there are problems, I have my own way of talking about them and solving them. I don’t like abrasive or hostile confrontation or bringing things up at inappropriate times. It is in my nature to wait for the perfect, quiet moment, when I can be calm and discuss what my feelings are. In family life, that can be super important to know. If my friend wanted to express some concern about something I’d done, and they went about it in a very direct and aggressive manner, nothing would be resolved. Everyone has ways they deal with conflict and how they best resolve them. The first step to good communication and resolution in the family is by being sensitive to how others communicate. Last week, I talked about how we think about a problem becomes how we view a problem. I think the same thi...

I never fully understood family stressors or crises until I turned 18. And it wasn’t that I suddenly understood when I got older haha! The night before my eighteenth birthday, my father had a heart attack. He ended up being in open heart surgery on my birthday. Even though all went as well as physically possible, it was scary. It seemed like in one second, something could rip apart our family we had taken a lifetime to build. Everyone goes through family stressors and crises. But, I think ultimately how we decide to think about them makes all the difference in their outcome! There is a common explanation of stressor events that is called the Double ABCX Model. In this, it shows the components that always make up how a stressor event affects a family. A would equal the A ctual Event. We can just take the example of my father’s heart attack. A would be the actual heart attack. B is  B oth the resources and how we as a family responded to the event. So, B for us, would be praying f...

“Communication is key.” I have heard that so often when being given advice about dating and marriage. But, sometimes, what we see portrayed in media, books, or even personal examples may not fit that idea. In all marriages, there needs to be an open communication between partners. We usually think of communication surrounding things like finances, children, or everyday things that are similar. But, recently I’ve learned to see the huge application that communication has to fidelity, physical intimacy, and even overall satisfaction in marriage. Many of the overarching problems created in marriage could be solved by better communication. For example, having a marriage of high fidelity is important. But in today’s world, the lines surrounding what is and is not appropriate are somewhat blurred. People who are in a marriage of high fidelity are true, faithful, and completely open with the other person. Trust like this doesn’t come automatically. There has to be continual effort to incre...

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...