Budgeting

Today in class we discussed about the benefits and drawbacks of having a two parent household.

I know there a lot of studies that show why it is important to have a mother in the home. I strongly believe that will be beneficial in a family setting. However, I do understand and realize that, that does not always seem achievable. 

In fact, I come from a family where once both children were in school my parents both had jobs. I honestly do not feel that I was at a disadvantage at all. I am thankful to have had a mother who took care of me and my sister when we were young. I am thankful that I also had a mother who worked as well. I am thankful for my father’s willingness to serve this beautiful country. That being said, I think your decision of who is going to work and who is not, or when you will work or take time off is strictly between you, your spouse, and the Lord. 

I would take this time to advise you though that no matter what you do whether both people are in the work force or one individual is working you find a way to budget two things. 

1. Budget your money,

Make sure that you have an account of where your money is going. Make sure you are aware of your spending habits. In doing so find a way to set aside money for certain things every month. Along with that I would advise you to do what you can to start some type of savings account.

2. Budget your time,

Working can take a toll on the family, time away from the family even for beneficial things such and work or learning at school can become detrimental to the family unit. Make sure that you are still taking time to develop those family roles. Also the cultivate those relationships as a unit and as sub-units.

In order to get by in this world, we must have a job. However, do not forget that in order to enter the celestial kingdom we must be sealed. What a shame it would be if we spent our whole lives working and did not take the time to cultivate loving, lasting relationships. God loves you. I love you!

Pray Always xoxo

Fulfilling and Strethening your Role in Communication

This week was about communication! How important is communication and learning how to properly counsel our loved ones and those we come into contact with. In this section there was an amazing talk by M Russell Ballard called Strength in Counsel.
This talk was broken up into 5 different ways to help you fulfill your parental responsibilities.
The first, is focusing on fundamentals. We all have fundamentals that we live by whether religious or not. However since I am religious I am going to go from a religious stand point. Studying the teachings or the prophets and scriptures and focusing on those things is important. We need to learn to teach from basic fundamentals instead of the gospel according to me. This is important when teaching or children or even planning lessons.
Second, focus on people, do what you can to plan your schedule around other people schedules. I think this is also important to focus on the people because the way you talk to your 2 year old is going to be different than the way you communicate with your husband or wife. Be aware of who you are talking to and learn the best ways an times to communicate with them.
Third, promote openness and free expression. One big part of communication is also listening. Being anxiously engaged in what other people have to say so that they can share freely with you. Building your home to be a loving environment that anything can be discussed will help you to build stronger bonds as a family. Along with that matters can be discussed and handled in the home instead of people feeling they have to seek out love or guidance elsewhere.
Fourth, participation is a privilege make sure your family members see that the participation you add to these conversations or advice you are passionate about. This will help you to be an outstanding advocate in society, in the church, with your family and will help your children to learn to speak up and do the same in their lives in all different types of places or situations.
Fifth, lead with love. The number one thing we can remember is the last step. We come to this earth to become closer to our Father and brother, Jesus Christ. The best way we can do this is to implement love into everything we do. If we genuinely love or even try to love those around is we can begun to communicate, listen and build strong relationships that will build us up as well as those around us.

I'm going to leave a link to the talk at the bottom, feel free to check it out!

xoxo

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1993/10/strength-in-counsel?lang=eng

ABCs of Crisis

Sometimes we view stressors as very negative experiences. Especially stressors that take place in a family unit. However many things we consider stressors, especially in the family unit can be good things. Such a a child being born, or a new job starting, moving into a new house. However there are definitely more negative stressors such as the death of a loved one.

What can we do as individuals and families to make these stressors more bearable or dare I say even valuable. Most of these times we consider we are going through some type of crisis. However, I learned something very beautiful the characters for crisis in Chinese break up into two different parts; danger and opportunity.

Stress and crisis have the opportunity to cause lots of danger and break us down, but! They also can be a growing point. Crisis can enable us to gain humility, to grow closer to our families, grow closer to God, help us to be more understanding. So sometimes these situations that may seem dark and grim or maybe they really are dark situations can be turned around based on communication and attitudes with in the family.

When crisis arrives we need to look at the ABC crisis model. A- There is an Actual event. We are able to pin point it and discuss it openly with all family members. B- Both resources and responses, after recognizing the event that has taken place we now as a family assess the resources available to us to deal with the issue as well as how we are going to respond. Parents play a large role when it comes to this. I know this from my own personal experience. My father was overseas a lot when I was little because of the Marines and while that could have been a crisis for my mother having to raise her two children "alone" during that time the way she responded to his deployments had a lasting effect on me. I did not view these times as negative experiences and I still realized that I was able to communicate with my father. However I remember having friends on base who's mothers would quickly turn into panic mode when their husbands were gone. This reflected off the child and to this day many of those kids I grew up with that are now adults have seperation issues when their spouse is gone. C- Cognitions, the way people think and talk. After we have decided how we will respond to these situations we must be congicent in our everyday reactions to these events.

Always be active when crisis comes. There can be time for grieving but do not let that over take your life or your family. Make sure that people keep developing their roles in the family in a healthy way.

What is Intamacy?

Too often especially now a days we confuse sex as intimacy. Intimacy is a part of a relationship that can not be over looked and is in the end more important that sex. I will not down play that sex is important for a functional marriage but intimacy is what makes sex beautiful.

Webster states intimacy as "a state marked by emotional closeness." Now a days we live in a generation where closeness is marked as a physical thing. But real "closeness" is much deeper than that. It is a lot easier to strip down physically in front of people rather than emotionally. Stripping down emotionally is more bare, and raw. But from that something wonderful happens. A superficial relationship is put to the side and you are able to build something that is more than skin on skin.

Intimacy comes from communication a type of communication that can be embarrassing, or uncomfortable however this deeper level of communication is also exciting, beautiful and has so much worth. I would beg you to find someone you can talk to, about anything. Not only that but someone who you can grow with and work with. This will help you so much in the long run.

xoxo