The discussion this week was all about family crisis!  Even though we will all experience trials and crises in this life, it is more about how we choose to deal with them than the actual trial that we are struggling with.  I am currently Miss Payson 2013 for my hometown and because I hold that title I have the opportunity to compete at Miss Utah this summer.  This may seem like a super random tidbit, but as Miss Payson I had to choose something I wanted to promote throughout my community; something that mattered to me that I wanted to bring other people's attention to.  I chose something different than what has been done before, but it relates to our discussion this week.  My platform is called, "The Choice is Yours".  When I share my platform with others I focus on three main points.  First, the choices you make don't just affect you.  Second, happiness is a choice, not a consequence.  Third, the choice is yours to reach your full potential.  Mostly the discussion this week correlated with my first two points.  When talking about crisis and the way a family deals with it will forever affect everyone in the family.  If the parents choose to handle it one way the children may be affected by that.  With regards to the second point, I know life is hard, but when people insist on basing their happiness on the things that happen in their life, they won't ever be able to find true happiness.  If you think, oh I will be happy when I get married, well here is a wake up call... no one single event in your life can bring you happiness that will last forever.  On the contrary side, no event in your life should be so devastating that you should never be able to find happiness again.  The reason I chose the platform I did was because my biggest trials in my life came because I was being affected by the choices of my family members.  Each trial we went through we have dealt with in a different way.  Some were dealt with better than others.  I think we are starting to realize though that the best way to deal with a crisis when it comes is together as a family with the Lord as our focus.  No matter what happens when a trial comes I hope you realize you don't ever have to do it alone.  There will always be people who are willing to help and love you enough to help you!  Don't push that help away when hard times come.

I was really intrigued by the topic we covered today in class.  All week we have been talking about sexual intimacy and everything that goes with it!  Well today in particular we talked about how to teach your kids about sex, what fears people have about it, and how we have been taught it by either our parents or other sources.  I was trying to remember different ways people taught me about intimacy and most of the time it was a negative experience.  It wasn't ever addressed as a divine gift meant for creation between a husband and wife, but it was usually put in the light that sex is bad, bad, bad.... until you get married of course.  Well this kind of attitude towards the subject can create some real confusion.  There are so many young adults who have been told their whole lives that sex is a bad thing, then all of a sudden marriage comes along and it's okay?  It's kind of difficult to just switch gears on something that has been drilled into your head since you were 12 or younger.  One girl in the class gave an analogy her parents used to teach her about it.  It's like ice cream.  Ice cream always tastes good no matter when you eat it, but if you wait a little longer you can put toppings on it that make it taste even better!  She related the waiting time to waiting for marriage and the toppings are all of the beautiful things that come with an intimate relationship only protected by the bonds of marriage.  I really loved that analogy.  It doesn't put sexual intimacy in a bad light, because it wasn't intended to be a bad thing (the world has made it a bad thing), but it shows that it is so much more worth while if you wait until the time it was intended for.  It is that much sweeter! 
One other thought I wanted to touch on real quick was a way to keep your marriage strong!  The idea came from a book that discussed something called the magic five hours.  It was laid out in this way:
Parting time 2x5=10 minutes- so your parting time should be 2 minutes long 5 times a week.
Reunions 20x5=100- when you come back together at the end of the day take 20 minutes to talk to each other about your day!
Admiration 5x7=35- once a day take just 5 minutes to compliment and admire your spouse.
Affection 5x7=35- make sure to set aside five minutes a day to be affectionate with your spouse.
Weekly date 2 hours- even if you don't have kids, take the time to go on a real date with your spouse!  Talk to each other and tell fun stories.
All of this time adds up to 5 hours of magic that could potentially change your marriage.  I hope I have the chance to implement this in my own marriage some day! :)

This week we discussed this question: Why or how does the birth and care of a child frequently lead to decreased marital satisfaction? 

It is important, first, to remember that decreased marital satisfaction doesn't necessarily mean they are unhappy in the marriage.  Bringing a new baby into the world is a new thing especially for a new couple who is still learning and growing together.  Up until this point it has only been the two of them, but now they are adding a third person into the relationship.  Once this happens the attention that was all going to the other spouse is now having to be divided between the spouse and a child.  I think this is why they say they are experiencing decreased marital satisfaction.  It's not that their love decreases any, hopefully it grows with the birth of the child, but now the husband isn't receiving as much attention from the wife.  The wife spends a lot of time taking care of the baby which can be very time consuming and tiring so the time they may have spent together talking or doing other activities in the past is now devoted to taking care of the baby and making sure mom is taken care of.  They can overcome the idea that a baby makes them grow apart by making sure the nurturing and care taking of the baby isn't all just the mom's job.  If they find new things to do together with the baby involved then they are building a relationship between the three of them as a family.  Also, they still need to make sure they are getting one on one time with each other.  It's okay to hire a babysitter to come look after the baby for a few hours so they can go on a real date.  Or, once the baby is in bed, make sure they take that time to talk and do other things and just be together.  It definitely won't be easy though because you are changing the whole family structure by adding a child.

This week we have been talking about dating and what kinds of things are important in finding a marriage partner.  We always hear the phrase, "opposites attract" however, in dating people the opposite is true.  One of the laws of attraction is that you have similarities.  We have to be careful though to avoid misattribution of arousal.  You may have just raised your eyebrows and said huh?  Let me explain it this way.  If you ride on a scary roller coaster with a semi-attractive person, after the ride is over, because your adrenaline is pumping, you tend to think that person is more attractive.  This is an interesting concept, but if you look at it more closely we realize the physical symptoms we experience when we go through an exciting and adrenaline provoking experience are quite the same when we are around someone we are attracted to.  You might experience sweating, clammy hands, heart racing, and other physical symptoms.  This is the reason you might misattribute the feelings you are experiencing because they are the same in an adrenal provoking experience as they are when you are attracted to someone.  So be careful when the next guy asks you out to a scary movie or a theme park!  Make sure you see him in other situations so you can truly have an opportunity to understand your feelings.

Something I was thinking about during class was how my parents distributed things like chores and I honestly think they did a good job.  I have 5 brothers and 1 sister and I didn't ever feel like I did more or less work than my brothers.  We still to this day have a chore chart and when I live at home I am put back into the rotation for chores.  Along with household work I also helped with the outside work.  I wasn't exempt from pulling weeds or getting rid of rocks or even doing the mowing or weed whacking just because I was a girl.  That is one thing I definitely want to implement into my own family.  Gender roles is such a sensitive topic in our world today and I really think it is becoming one of Satan's tools to destroy the family.  If he can confuse us to the point that women believe so much that we should be equal with men in every aspect that family becomes less important and a job becomes more important then he has succeeded in destroying the family.  No I don't think that women shouldn't gain an education or hold a job if they want to, but really family is the most important thing and that is one of the biggest commandments; to multiply and replenish the earth by having and raising a family.  That is something I have always wanted and I definitely won't throw that away simply because I feel inferior to men.

I really love this class and all of the insightful things I learn each week.  It is always difficult to try to narrow down what I want to say.  I think today my post is going to be about a study we read on illegal immigrant families and the struggles they face coming to America.  Too often I think we look at the illegal immigrants in the United States and despise them for coming to our country, not speaking the language, and taking our jobs.  Are these really accurate descriptions of the people who come into our country though?  Imagine a mother and father with several children whom they love very much!  They want to give them everything they never had; excellent schooling, job opportunities, and new experiences.  Doesn't sound harmful at all right?  In fact I'm sure that's how most of you feel about your children.  It doesn't matter what country you come from, we can all relate to wanting the best for the ones we love.  When we start to see immigrants in this light it changes a few things.  In class we discussed the trials and hardships a family may face if they choose to immigrate.  Usually the Father leaves the family first and tries to begin a life here in America.  As a family the father being gone leaves a hole; the soul provider is gone causing the mother to have to go to work which takes her out of her motherly role in which she cares for the children, cooks meals, cleans, and is the nurturer.  Other family roles may change as well.  The older siblings may take on more adult responsibilities causing them to step out of their norm.  It just spirals until all of the original family roles have been changed.  Now the family finally gets the chance to move to America with their Father.  They haven't seen him in years... what does this do to their relationship?  The father may feel useless because they have learned to get along without him now.  The husband wife relationship has been damaged by the distance.  Aside from family relationships, the whole family is in a strange place, with strange new people, facing a new language and many things they don't understand.  All of this is because the parents simply wanted a better life for their children.  In this new place the children may be ridiculed and criticized because they can't speak the language or don't understand everything.  The support system the family once had from their own extended family is now gone and they must be feeling very alone.  This brings me to a question, is it really worth it to leave everything you know and everyone you love for what you think might be a better life?  Do we as Americans contribute in any way to making this country a better place for them to come or do we make it a worse place than they could have imagined? 

In class this week we talked a lot about roles in the family and relationships between family members.  We were asked what our role in our own family is and I know I am definitely the peacekeeper in my family!  I have five brothers and one sister so there tend to be lots of fights and things that I get the luxury of breaking up, but I am also a rock to my siblings and I'm starting to realize to my parents as well.  When times get hard and we are going through rough patches I am the one my family looks to for strength.  Now don't get me wrong, I struggle just as much as everyone else does through these trials, but I am starting to see that trials are only a small moment.  Even if it is something that lasts for years, we have to pick ourselves up each day and keep smiling because if we don't, we lose ourselves in despair and we start to pull away from not only our family members, but our Heavenly Father as well.  I've been there, and it's a dark hole that is hard to get out of, but remember you have been blessed with agency and you can choose who you want to be in this life and where you want to end up.