Coping in Family Crises

Every family must deal with times of stress and crisis.  Its one of the greatest challenges we face in life.  The daily battle of stress. Stress is a normal part of life. Stress can motivate you to get something done.  Families as well as individuals battle daily stressors that effect them to the point of crisis. What kinds of stressor events result in family crisis?  The death of a child is one of the most severe crises anyone faces. The suffering and pain for a family is unimaginable.  Severe trauma like this is more than most families can handle.  

Some of the common stressor's of a crisis are death, serious illness, accidents, loss of work, an unwanted pregnancy, moving, alcohol abuse, and infidelity. Next to death, separation, and divorce, family violence is the most difficult experience people confront. 

People react to crisis in different ways.  We know that we can't control what happens to us, but we can try to control how we respond to life crisis.  Ineffective coping patterns leave people at a lower level of functioning. Denial, avoidance, and scapegoating are ineffective coping patterns.  Effective coping is facilitated by developing family strengths.  It is taking responsibility, affirming individual and family worth, balancing self concern with other concerns, and finding and using available resources. 

I found a quote by President Howard W. Hunter that he said, "Please remember this one thing. If our lives and our faith are centered upon Jesus Christ and His restored gospel, nothing can ever go permanently wrong." (BYU Devotional Speeches, 13 March 1989, p.112). 

Our Part in the Plan of Salvation

I want to teach my children that sex is sacred. Sex is a procreative power to bring spirits to earth, to experience the plan of salvation. I believe this is the most sacred thing on earth. This is the first step to the fathers plan, bringing his children to earth. We are so lucky to assist in this first step in the plan of salvation. Elder Holland says, "It would be better not to address the topic than to damage it with casualty."

The plan has been set for children to come to families, families who obey God and raise their children in love and honor. This first step can't work unless it is a righteous family that the child is brought to. The second point is that families assist God in the plan of salvation as they raise their children in love and honor. God allows all of his children to have this wonderful plan be brought to pass, and then teaching their children. It is so magnificent of our father to give us this opportunity in his perfect plan. I love him and so grateful for this.

I testify that if we are worthy, active, and keeping our covenants we can be blessed in God's wonderful plan of salvation.

"Sex is Good, its a Gift From God, it's Worth the Wait."

We can learn from sex therapist, Laura Botherson, that it is important to speak to ones child about sex at key phases in the child's life. Before the age of eight, before puberty, and before marriage. The parents attitudes and beliefs about sex greatly influence the understanding and comfort of the child.

Doctor Botherson strongly suggests that children will have a better sex life after marriage, if their parents adequately prepare them in their adolescent years. Sex can be a topic in Mormon culture that many parents dance around and avoid. This leaves the children with a lack of understanding and the important role it plays in marriage.

I think it would be a good idea to teach that sex is a sacred thing to our children. Intimacy is a great way to know each other, and is so important. Every topic of covenant keeping in marriage is a big role in marital success, and each should be taught to the child with care and consideration.

Someday I'm Going To Get Married!!!

Someday, I'm going to get married!  I am sure of it!  This chapter covers a few very important realities for me.  It is all about getting married. Under the title of expectations it states, " When people marry, they have certain expectations about what their marriage will involve.  They expect that marriage will make them happy and fulfilled, and that it will last.  Most people believe that the best way to have and to maintain intimacy is through marriage."  {Marriage and Family The Quest For Intimacy, Robert H. Lauer, Jeanette C. Lauer  187,188}.

  Believing that  "you're my everything" expectation is unrealistic and can lead to serious marital problems.  At the same time marriage can bring a certain amount of life satisfaction.  Studies prove that  married people are generally happier than single people.  That being said, things begin to change after a marriage begins.  Some would say, that reality sets in and rent needs to be paid, dinner prepared, and life gets busy.  Time and energy is not just devoted to each other but to everything else.
In this chapter it says, " Human life is not a honeymoon.  Marriage is not a honeymoon, but it is important to keep in mind that the exhilaration of the honeymoon can be periodically recaptured in a long-term relationship"

Now that the air has been let out of my balloon of....." I'm getting married someday!"  I'll just end this blog post with a hopeful expectation, that it's all up to me as well as my future husband to keep the honeymoon going.    

Falling in Love is the Fun Part and The Five Points of the RAM Model

Falling in love is the fun part!  It's a wonderful feeling I'm sure.   Being a romantic at heart, I look forward to all the trimmings of a relationship,love,and marriage.  One thing I know for sure, is that the Ram Model has a point!  Actually five points to be exact.  RAM stands for Relationship Attachment Model which is produced by Dr. John Van Epp. The RAM Model helps to look at how relationships should grow to become healthy relationships.  Here are the five important parts which helps bond a relationship.

1. KNOW- Know your partner. Learning about a person is a very key point to understanding if he or       she is a possible consideration for falling in love with them. The knowing comes first and
     trust develops.

2-TRUST- Trust your partner. The more you know about your partner can help you develop a feeling
    of trust for them.

3-RELY- Reliance grows from the ways you meet another persons needs, as well as how they meet        your needs.

4-COMMIT- You are committed to them and the relationship.  This is that oneness and unity
   of being a couple and belonging to one another.  Being sincere, and loyal.

5-TOUCH- Sexual touch- a strong contributor to the feelings of intimacy and closeness in any romantic relationship. Often, the physical part of a relationship begins too fast leaving no room to develop the other four parts of the RAM Model. Touch is a very important element that strengthens and unifies a marriage relationship and is meant to draw a couple together as one.
   

It is a good thing when a relationship contains all 5 of these points.  However if your relationship has 4 of these they can carry you until you can work to gain all five. If a relationship is built only and foremost on touch, what will happen during the conflict of a fight?  It's hard to want to touch when you are frustrated or angry.  If you don't know and trust the person you love, what keeps a relationship together?

Understanding the  RAM Model offers a starting point  for a loving, successful relationship.  Romance aside, I believe to know, trust, rely, commit, and touch will add up to a great love story!

                           Annie

Diversity in Families

Family and the Meaning of Family in a Diverse World

I love my family.  I am the baby in a family of five children.  I have a loving Father who provides and protects us.  He is an example of honor, strength, and service to God, and his role as a husband, father, as well as a grandfather.  I have a mother who loves, nurtures and supports me in all I do.  Her example of service and devotion to family is an example that I hope to follow.  I have one older brother and he is the best big brother I could ask for.  I have three beautiful older sisters who are all married now and raising beautiful families with their husbands.  I love my sisters so much.  Family plays a very important part in my life.  These individual relationships strengthen and help me become the person I want to be.  I haven't even mentioned, my extended family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins who play a gigantic role in our family structure.  Of, course, not all families have two parents.  Some are composed of single parent homes.  There are mixed races and some with two adults of the same sex with or without children.  Which comes to my post about the diversity in families today.

 The question, what is meant by family?  In Marriage and Family, The Quest for Intimacy, chapter 2 it states, the way to define family is to identify its functions. Anthropologist have identified four functions that all families fulfill: sexual relations, reproduction, socialization of children, and economic cooperation, This view is somewhat lacking to me.  Another definition of family is a group united by marriage.  It's interesting to note that over 20 years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley introduced The Family, A Proclamation To The World. Who could imagine how important it would become in defending marriage and family today?  Whatever type of family we belong too still needs some of the very same values to hold families together.  Love, respect, support, and sharing are vital in all types of families.  Every family has strengths as well as challenges. I know that diversity in families is a fact of life.  What matters most is love.

Consider Therapy

Some people are labeled because they are gay or homosexual, but I learned in class that you don't see them you see the label, which is kind of sad. You want to see any person as a child of God. I think that people are socialized as well as tempted to be gay. Whether that be through abuse, childhood experiences, or rejection from others of their same sex. I don't know all the reasons why people feel homosexual feelings, but I do know that these feelings have the potential to be overcome through therapy, like a porn addiction, depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness or addiction we deal with. Yes, it will be hard. And yes, it is a real struggle. I firmly believe that there is nothing the Atonement of Jesus Christ cannot heal. If we have the desire to change, and the desire to heal, he can heal us. But, we have to have the desire. This change could take a lifetime, some may never overcome homosexual temptations in this life, just like others may never be completely free from the temptation of pornography. I do know that we can overcome everything with Christ. Even if you still feel tempted till the day that you die, you can overcome the desire to act on your temptation, with Jesus Christ. He loves you, and anything is possible with him. I truly believe that Heavenly Father did not make people "gay" but I do believe that he gives us trials and that is a trial for some.

-"With God, nothing shall be impossible." Matthew 19:26