My Identity as a Mother

I was having a conversation with someone about how many children we were planning to have. The person I was having the conversation with has two children and feels like that is the right number for their family. This made me think about what it would be like to be done having children at this point, with only Sam and Grace. Thinking about this made me realize that I am definitely, 100%, NOT ready to be done having children.

Ted and I were already planning on having more children, but I didn't realize how strongly I felt about it until this experience. I just got used to my identity as a mother of small children, and I am not ready to give it up yet. I can't imagine just having these two kids that just keep getting older so fast, forcing me to reinvent myself again way sooner than I am ready for. I don't want them to grow up and become all independent and have to go back and get a job again! No thanks!

I complain a lot about the challenges of being a stay-at-home mom, but there are a lot of things I really love about it as well, and I realized I have become pretty attached to this stage of life. So, even though there are drawbacks to starting over again and again each time a new baby comes along and losing the newfound freedom you’ve gained as your children get older and become a little more independent, I am not ready to give up my critical role as a mother of infants and small children. Having more kids is definitely the right choice for me at this stage of my life, and it's comforting to know that, even as I wonder how on earth I will manage to care for a third child on top of the two I already have. People do it though, so it must be possible. And I now know that that is definitely the life I want for myself, despite the challenges it will bring. So I will go forward with faith, trusting that the Lord will give me the strength and wisdom I need to succeed.

Life Philosophies

There's a conversation Ted and I have had several times throughout our marriage. It's a discussion about the Rudy philosophy versus the It's a Wonderful Life philosophy. In the movie Rudy, Sean Astin’s character sacrifices everything to follow his dreams, while in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character sacrifices his dreams to fulfill family and community obligations. Which is the correct philosophy? Which is the worthier objective? Which is the more worthwhile sacrifice?

I realized that neither of these philosophies is a 100% correct philosophy for everyone all the time. Following your dreams at all costs can lead you to act selfishly and damage your relationships with others. Sacrificing too much of your own needs and desires to meet the desires and expectations of others can be unhealthy and can create unhealthy relationships.

The only philosophy that is true for everyone 100% of the time is the one contained in the following Bible verses: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).

The only thing thing or person you're supposed to be willing to sacrifice everything for, all your heart, soul, mind and strength, is God. Not your dreams, not a cause, not your talents or career, not another person, not a material possession--only God. That’s the answer.

You may be asking, why is God the only one worthy of such a sacrifice? Because He is the only one who has already sacrificed everything for you. Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price of the atonement, took the pains, sicknesses, and sins of every single one of God’s children on Himself, which gave Him, and only Him, the power to save each of us and ensure our ultimate, eternal peace and happiness. He is the only one who knows the correct path for each of us to take in our life, what dreams, causes, relationships, and talents to pursue, to help us learn what we need to learn to reach our full potential, do the most good in this mortal life, and prepare for salvation in the next.

Sometimes we have the philosophy, my life will be complete when…(insert mortal experience that we think we have to have in order to be happy: marriage, children, career objective, material possession, etc.). This kind of philosophy can be a dangerous one. To think that your happiness requires some specific mortal experience or possession or achievement is foolish. Either you won't get it and you will think that you can't possibly be happy without it (and you can't be as long as your focus is all on that one thing--marriage, career, etc.), or you’ll get it and realize it has not brought you all the happiness you will ever need, and you’ll either keep trying to make it do that when it doesn't have the power to, or you’ll lose direction and meaning in your life (ex: Olympic athletes who win the gold and then don't know what to do with themselves after achieving that dream).

God’s plans and dreams for us, on the other hand, are with our eternal progress in mind, and each step we take on the path He has laid out for us brings us a step closer to an eternity of joy and increase. No experience we have here is a waste or a failure; every experience can teach us something that can draw us closer to God and help us become more like Him, which is our ultimate goal, and one we can never fully achieve in this life or without the Savior’s help. The more we choose to seek out and follow God’s plan for us, even, and perhaps especially, when it requires sacrifice, the more we will learn, and the more peace, joy, and love we will feel. God wants His children to be happy, and only by sacrificing our all to Him will we find the true, lasting happiness we are seeking, accomplish the things that are most important for us to accomplish, and become the people we have the potential to be.

Food Philosophies

I had a discussion with my mother-in-law about food the other day, and I realized that her philosophy on food and feeding your family is totally different than the food philosophy I grew up with in my family. My mother-in-law had eight children, and she did an excellent job of consistently providing healthy, balanced meals for her family to eat. One of her big things was making sure everyone had a filling, nutritious, hot breakfast to eat every school morning so that they would be in the best physical state to be able to learn and excel at school. As she was describing to me her process of planning and preparing meals for the month or the week, I realized that her main concern in planning meals for her family was nutrition. She took little to no thought about whether or not her family would like the foods she had decided to prepare. 

That's totally different than the way food planning worked in my house growing up. When I try to plan food, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to make food that people will actually like to eat, myself included. Nutrition was a secondary concern in my family. The main concern was whether or not people liked the food that was prepared. My mother-in-law claimed she didn't really have any picky eaters in her family. I, on the other hand, come from a family of picky eaters. I'm sure many of you reading this would say that this is the fault of my parents and their parenting. And you could be right. I don't really know. All I know is that in my family it was considered inconsiderate and unkind to offer hungry people food they could not eat because they did not like it. You may as well not have made food at all for all the good it did them. 

As a child, my mom was forced to sit at the table until she’d eaten whatever food was prepared, whether she liked it or not. This was such an unpleasant experience for her that she was fiercely determined never to do that to her children. Looking back, I'm pretty sure food was a big comfort thing for my mom, one of her coping mechanisms for dealing with other difficult or unpleasant things in her life. In my family, my dad was the one with the responsibility for making dinner. That's just the way things worked out in the division of responsibilities based on my parents’ individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The reason I think food was a comfort thing for my mom is because if my dad made dinner and tweaked the recipe in a way that made it taste different or made something new that my mom didn't like, it wasn't just an inconvenience for her, it was a tragedy. How dare my dad ruin the meal that way. 

I see a little bit of that food as a comfort thing in myself as well. On my mission, for example, I had a companion who would get so caught up in missionary work that she would sometimes forget to plan in time for us to eat lunch. I had to let her know that I could not function without eating all my meals, partly because I get really cranky if I don't eat regularly, but also because I was doing so many things that were hard for me as a missionary, I really needed to be able to rely on the comforting safety of good food at regular intervals to help me stay sane and cope with the hard things. 

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is with all this. I'm not saying that one food philosophy is better or worse than the other--for now, I am just noticing the differences. I feel like that is the first step in making a deliberate choice about what your own philosophy will be--realizing that there are different ways to think about something and that you can choose how you think about it. Do I have any responsibility to take the food preferences of my family members into account when making food, or is the nutritiousness of the meal I offer the only important consideration? What do I want to teach my children about food and its purpose? How do I want to teach that? What is an appropriate way to react to encountering food you don't like? How should I best teach and model that for my children? These are all questions I must answer as I figure out what my own food philosophy will be.

On Being Female

With all the discussions on gender these days, I’ve been pondering the differences between male and female. I feel like the feminist argument is that the only difference between males and females is the difference in sexual reproduction equipment. All other differences are social constructs that should not be imposed on people. Besides in the category of body parts, males and females are exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same. 

On the other hand, you have the transgender dialogue which says that there is something besides your sexual reproductive organs that makes you male or female. This seems to run counter to the feminist argument. According to feminism, there is nothing abnormal about being a girl who likes trucks or a boy who likes dolls, for example; it’s just society pushing girls in one direction and boys in another, not anything innately different in the nature of boys and girls. The transgender argument, however, seems to say that if you identify with things that society says are more traditionally things associated with members of the opposite gender, like if you are a boy that enjoys dressing up and wearing makeup, for example, then you are not just a boy that likes things society says that only girls should like, but instead you may be a female trapped in the physical body of a male, suggesting that there are internal differences of some sort between males and females, not just outward physical differences. Somehow it seems that the same people subscribe to both these arguments, even though they seem to contradict one another.

One thing I’ve found interesting about the personal stories of transgender individuals that I’ve read (these stories are of individuals who were born with male body parts but who feel that they may really be female) is the level of importance they place on their desire to dress up and look pretty. In their stories, that desire seems to be emphasized as a core part of their transgender identity, or their identity as female rather than male.

What I find interesting about this is that I am a female, but I do not consider dressing up and looking pretty as a core part of my identity. It's something I do occasionally because society expects it of me, but it is not something I enjoy doing or that I feel is an important part of my identity. I don't feel like that makes me any less female though. It makes me less stereotypical female, but not less core identity female. I think there are women for whom dressing up and looking pretty is a core part of their female identity, but I am not one of them. (I have a suspicion that this may be influenced by whether or not dressing up and looking pretty is a core part of your mother’s female identity, meaning that it is something learned, not something innate, but I don't know for sure.)

This begs the question, if we lived in a time and place and class of society in which dressing up in fancy clothes and wigs was acceptable for men, would these transgender individuals feel more comfortable in their male identity? Or is their focus on dressing up in female clothes and wearing makeup merely an outward manifestation of other inward gender differences that are simply more difficult to express and less noticeable/unacceptable to other members of society? What does it really mean to be male or to be female, outside of stereotypes that society tells us we should expect from each gender? That is the million dollar question, I guess. And I don't have an answer. Just musings. 

If my personal female identity is not defined by female stereotypes such as liking shoes, purses, jewelry, makeup, clothing, shopping, scented candles and lotion, facials, interior decorating, and arts and crafts, what is it defined by? Having breasts and a vagina? That does seem to be a significant part of it. The fact that because of the body I was born with my responsibilities include pregnancy and breastfeeding? That also seems to be a pretty significant part of my identity as a female. Attached to that, a sense of the importance of my responsibility to teach and nurture my children? That is definitely a huge part of my current female identity. The fact that in order to sexually reproduce I must marry a man? That was actually a somewhat troubling fact for me in my youth since I was not especially impressed with the male population I observed around me; luckily, I found a Ted :) 

I feel like most of my personal identity as a female is tied to the way my body functions and the unique responsibilities I have because of that. Perhaps also my female friendships and the common struggles we have to deal with our emotions, form meaningful relationships, find someone to marry, have and raise children, and find meaning in our lives. Gender identity seems so straightforward when you are not someone who struggles with gender dysphoria, which I think is why it is such a difficult struggle to understand for those who don't experience it. I am female because my body is female. I don't have to do anything to qualify for the female group except have the body I was born with, which lends itself to certain strictly female activities, such as menstruation, childbearing and breastfeeding. I have these things in common with other females, either the reality of them, the memory of them, the hope of them in the future, or the grief for the lack of them. These are the things that form in large part my female identity. I'm not sure what it means to be female outside of those physical aspects and all that comes with them, unless we're talking about some of the more superficial stereotypes, most of which don't apply to me. Those are some of my musings on being female.

"O Wretched Man That I Am"

My study of the Book of Mormon this week brought me to these verses written by the prophet Nephi:

2 Nephi 4:17-18

17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.

18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.

My thought reading these verses this time through was, “I have been there so many times.”

When I was younger I didn't understand Nephi's words in these verses. Nephi was a very righteous man, a prophet even. What on earth was he talking about?

Now I know. No matter how righteous you are, none of us is perfect. We each have our own weaknesses that we struggle with, and sometimes those weaknesses can seem so all-consuming and so difficult to bear. And when we have been working on our weaknesses for a long time and feel like we have made so much progress, and then our weaknesses rear their ugly heads again and knock us down and make us feel like we haven't made any progress at all, it can be so so frustrating and discouraging. We feel like saying, “O wretched man (or woman) that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.” 

It doesn't matter what those temptations and sins are that beset you or how they compare to anyone else’s. Any sin will keep you out of heaven, no matter how small. Every single one of us needs the atonement to overcome the sins and weaknesses that we personally struggle with, that are keeping us personally from becoming more like God. 

Nephi goes on to say, “nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted,” and talks about all the ways God has supported him in his trials, delivered him from his enemies, given him great knowledge and visions and sent angels to minister unto him. Then, starting in verse 26, he says, 

“O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?....Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul….Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.”

Nephi turns the focus from himself and his weaknesses to the Lord and His mercy. He recognizes that it is Satan, “the enemy of [his] soul,” that wants him to “linger in the valley of sorrow” and allow his “strength [to] slacken” as he dwells on his weaknesses and allows discouragement and self-deprecation to consume him. Those feelings of discouragement and despair do not come from the Lord, and Nephi realizes that he must shake them off and instead rejoice in the Lord and His mercy and the power the atonement gives him to repent and be forgiven and change.

The Lord has an infinite amount of love for each of His children and is way more patient with us than we are with ourselves. The Lord says in the book of Ether, “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27). In the next verse He says, “Behold, I will show unto [my children] their weakness, and I will show unto them that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me--the fountain of all righteousness.” 

When we are confronted with our weaknesses, we can give in to the enemy of our souls and allow our souls to linger in the valley of sorrow and our strength to slacken, or we can choose the Lord’s way and face our weaknesses with “faith, hope and charity.” When we have faith and hope that we can change and become better and that the Lord will help us, our outlook on our lives and ourselves is so much brighter, and we feel so much more motivated to keep moving forward and striving to become better. The Lord is full of charity and love for us, and He wants us to extend that kind of love to ourselves and to those around us. May we all learn to do that and to “rejoice in the Lord” rather than “droop in sin” is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Dealing with Hard Emotions

A little while back on Facebook I saw this quote by John Gottman:

“Your emotional awareness and ability to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in life.”

I think there is a lot of truth to that. The most difficult thing about most hard things in life is the emotions that come with a particular event or circumstance. I feel like we spend a lot of our life developing coping mechanisms to deal with hard emotions we experience, and then we spend the rest of our life trying to unlearn the unhealthy coping mechanisms we’ve developed and replace them with healthier ways of coping with hard emotions. We know we’ve really progressed when events or circumstances that used to trigger hard emotions for us no longer do because we’ve learned to see those events/circumstances in a different, more truthful way.

I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve personally learned while learning to cope with difficult emotions in healthier ways in my life, in case the things that I’ve learned could help someone else in their own learning process. 

One of the biggest lies I believed before learning to handle hard emotions better was that the way I felt was a result of other people's words/actions. I gave way too much control of my feelings to other people. Because of this I loved other people, but I was also terrified of them. I loved people because they had the power to make me happy when they noticed me or spent time with me, but I was also terrified of them because they had equal power to make me sad when they ignored me or rejected my overtures of friendship. 

This false belief caused me problems in a few different ways. First of all, it made me incredibly sensitive to the way other people reacted to me because I was always trying to gauge my acceptability as a person and how I should feel about myself based on how others reacted to me. Obviously problematic. As I mentioned in an earlier post, how other people react to you is often a much better reflection of them and their current emotional state than it is of you and your value as a human being. 

Another problem this false belief caused me took me a bit longer to recognize, but was equally damaging to me and to my relationships. Believing that my feelings were determined by others and their interactions with me, I tended to put too much of the burden of keeping me happy and feeling good about my life on those who were closest to me. I thought that when I was sad I needed those close to me to show me love to make me happy again. I knew I usually felt happy when I was with people I loved a lot, and so I focused my life on spending as much time as possible with people I loved and feared the times when I could not be with them. I became emotionally dependent on other people, which hurt both them and me.

The biggest lesson I had to learn in dealing with hard emotions is that other people are not in charge of my emotions; I’m in charge of my own emotions. I found this to be both a freeing and a terrifying truth. No one is responsible for making me feel happy in my life except me. I have the power to do that, and I also have the responsibility to do that. Only me. Of course it’s easier to be happy generally when you have people in your life that love you and a job or activities to do that you enjoy, but day to day, minute to minute, you are the one that has control over your own feelings and actions and the one that determines your own happiness by how you think about and interpret the world around you and what you choose to do.

One thing I noticed as I learned to unravel my feelings and trace them back to their source was that the trigger for hard emotions I experienced was often different than I initially thought it was. How I explained to myself the reason for my sadness was often not the actual trigger at all, making it difficult to resolve the actual problem. I think that is often the reason we struggle to resolve difficult emotions: we’re looking for solutions in the wrong places to fix things that aren't actually the source of the problem at all.

Let me give you an example. Often I get sad when I try to use my relationship with someone as a coping mechanism for a different problem. For example, maybe my house is a mess and I need to clean it, but cleaning sounds hard and my motivation to tackle the actual problem of a messy house is low. What’s actually making me unhappy is a messy house, but instead of tackling the actual problem, I try to find a different way to feel better, such as hanging out with a friend. When my friend can't hang out, I am sad that I cannot use that means to feel better and start bemoaning my lack of friends or their lack of desire to hang out with me, when my real problem is not a lack of friends but the fact that I have a messy house that I haven't cleaned yet, but I’ve convinced myself otherwise. Or maybe I have the responsibility to make a phone call or perform some other task that sounds hard, but I’m avoiding it, and so I start feeling a desperate need to know I am loved in spite of failing to accomplish something that someone else is expecting of me or that I know I need to do, when really if I just did the thing I knew I needed to do instead of procrastinating I would have no need to compensate for my failure to do it by getting reassurance of love from someone else.

So, the end lesson I’ve learned from all this is that when I start feeling difficult emotions such as loneliness or a desperate need to feel loved, one of the best ways for me to feel better is not to wallow in my sadness or start seeking reassurance of love from my friends, but instead to push through the hard emotions and start doing something that I know needs doing. If I’m feeling frustrated that I’m living in a messy house, I need to get up and start cleaning it, not wallow in my frustration and wait for someone else to take care of my problem for me. I have the power to solve my own problems and change the way I’m feeling. Often all it takes is a little productivity to realize that my problem is not a lack of people that love me or the amount of love I’m being shown--neither of which is a problem I have the power to solve, since it involves the agency of others--but rather my failure to create meaning in my life outside of other people and work to accomplish good things on my own. Once I start working to accomplish something, even if I really am not feeling motivated to do so starting out, by the end I feel so much better about myself and my life, and all the other problems I thought I had and the hard emotions I was feeling dissipate in the positive feelings created by working to accomplish something good. 

Yes, so that’s my two cents of wisdom for today: if you're feeling sad, particularly if your sadnesses tend to stem from things you make up in your head and not actual life problems, push through the sad feelings and start working to accomplish something you know needs to be done, even if that task seems to have nothing to do with what you’re sad about, and you may find that what you were sad about is actually less of a problem than you thought it was and that productivity has miraculously produced an overall happier state of mind for you. Prayer usually helps a lot too. When I pray for help to see things differently and feel better, and then I get up and do something, the Spirit will often also teach me a little nugget of wisdom or a different way of seeing things that magically makes me feel better as well, and makes me a wiser person overall. I love you all, and I wish you well in learning to cope with your own difficult emotions--one of the greatest challenges we all face in this life, I think, but one that it is possible to overcome with the right tools and a lot of hard work.

*Note: For some people, the right tools may include medication and/or therapy, and that is totally fine. Whatever works best for you for handling the difficult emotions you struggle with (what those emotions are and what triggers them is different for everyone) in a positive, healthy way is great. No judgement here.

Lessons I Learned at General Conference April 2016

I just wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from this last General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was held at the beginning of this month. You can find the full text of all the different talks that were given at https://www.lds.org/general-conference?cid=HP14GC&lang=eng. I’ve grouped the quotes into four different general messages or lessons that I got from the Conference that were important to me personally.

Lesson #1: My Role as a Mother

Cheryl A. Esplin (“He Asks Us to Be His Hands”)

• “Unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives” (President Monson).

• “Don’t think of your task as a burden; think of it as an opportunity to learn what love really is” (Lola B. Walters).

Neill F. Marriott (“What Shall We Do?”)

• “We build the kingdom when we nurture others.”

• “Love is making space in your life for someone else” (including children)

• “Becoming a builder of the kingdom require[s] selfless sacrifice.”

• “All of us need a spiritual and physical place of belonging. We…can create this [place of belonging for others].”

M. Russell Ballard (“Family Councils”)

• “Children desperately need parents willing to listen to them.”

• “A family council that is patterned after the councils in heaven, filled with Christlike love, and guided by the Lord’s Spirit will help us to protect our family…from the evils of the world.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (“In Praise of Those Who Save”)

• D&C 64:33: “Be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.”

• “Whatever problems your family is facing, whatever you must do to solve them, the beginning and the end of the solution is charity, the pure love of Christ.”

D. Todd Christofferson (“Fathers”)

• “The perfect, divine expression of fatherhood is our Heavenly Father….His work and glory are the development, happiness, and eternal life of His children.”

• “Perhaps the most essential of a father’s [or mother’s] work is to turn the hearts of his children to their Heavenly Father. If by his example as well as his words a father can demonstrate what fidelity to God looks like in day-to-day living, that father will have given his children the key to peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”

• “A father [or mother] who reads scripture to and with his children acquaints them with the voice of the Lord.”

• D&C 68:25, 28: “And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents. …And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord.”

• Psalms 78:5-7: “For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should [then] arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”

• “When a father [or mother] provides correction, his motivation must be love and his guide the Holy Spirit.”

• “Discipline in the divine pattern is not so much about punishing as it is about helping a loved one along the path of self-mastery.”

• Mosiah 4:14-15: “Ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another. …But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.”

• “Let us lay aside the exaggerated notions of individualism and autonomy in today’s culture and think first of the happiness and well-being of others.”

• “Despite our inadequacies, our Heavenly Father will magnify us and cause our simple efforts to bear fruit.”

Lesson #2: How to Draw Closer to the Lord and Seek His Help and Support in Trying Times

Henry B. Eyring (“Where Two or Three Are Gathered”)

• D&C 88:63: “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”

Dale G. Renlund (“That I Might Draw All Men Unto Me”)

• “The greater the distance between the giver and the receiver, the more the receiver develops a sense of entitlement” (Wilford W. Andersen).

• “Our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, are the ultimate Givers. The more we distance ourselves from Them, the more entitled we feel. We begin to think that we deserve grace and are owed blessings. We are more prone to look around, identify inequities, and feel aggrieved—even offended—by the unfairness we perceive…when we are distant from God, even small inequities loom large.”

• “The closer we are to Jesus Christ in the thoughts and intents of our hearts, the more we appreciate His innocent suffering, the more grateful we are for grace and forgiveness, and the more we want to repent and become like Him.”

• “The best way I know of to draw closer to God is to prepare conscientiously and partake worthily of the sacrament each week.”

• “The sacrament truly helps us know our Savior. It also reminds us of His innocent suffering. If life were truly fair, you and I would never be resurrected; you and I would never be able to stand clean before God.”

• “Through God’s compassion, kindness, and love, we will all receive more than we deserve, more than we can ever earn, and more than we can ever hope for.”

Ronald A. Rasband (“Standing with the Leaders of the Church”)

• D&C 68:6: “Be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you.”

• “I have needed the Savior and the rescue of His hand so many times….I have felt confident at times leaping over the side of the boat…into unfamiliar places, only to realize I could not do it alone.”

David A. Bednar (“Always Retain a Remission of Your Sins”)

• “Being born again, comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances” (Joseph Smith).

• “Holy ordinances are central in the Savior’s gospel and in the process of coming unto Him and seeking spiritual rebirth. Ordinances are sacred acts that have spiritual purpose, eternal significance, and are related to God’s laws and statutes.”

• “The ordinances of salvation and exaltation administered in the Lord’s restored Church are far more than rituals or symbolic performances. Rather, they constitute authorized channels through which the blessings and powers of heaven can flow into our individual lives.”

• D&C 84:19-21: “And this greater priesthood administereth the gospel and holdeth the key of the mysteries of the kingdom, even the key of the knowledge of God. Therefore, in the ordinances thereof, the power of godliness is manifest. And without the ordinances thereof, and the authority of the priesthood, the power of godliness is not manifest unto men in the flesh.”

• 3 Nephi 27:20: “Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day.”

• D&C 59:9: “And that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day.”

• Moroni 4:3: “O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this bread to the souls of all those who partake of it; that they may eat in remembrance of the body of thy Son, and witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him, and keep his commandments which he hath given them, that they may always have his Spirit to be with them. Amen.”

W. Christopher Waddell (“A Pattern for Peace”)

• “Peace of mind, peace of conscience, and peace of heart are not determined by our ability to avoid trials, sorrow, or heartache.”

• “In our search for peace amidst the daily challenges of life, we’ve been given a simple pattern to keep our thoughts focused on the Savior, who said: ‘Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me’ (D&C 19:23).”

• Isaiah 2:3: “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways.”

• “A key difference between those who were ashamed, fell away, and were lost and those who did not heed the mocking from the building and stood with the prophet is found in two phrases: first, ‘after they had tasted,’ and second, ‘those that were partaking’ (1 Nephi 8:26-28, 33).”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (“He Will Place You on His Shoulders and Carry You Home”)

• “Obedience is the lifeblood of faith. It is by obedience that we gather light into our souls.”

• “God sees us as we truly are--and He sees us worthy of rescue.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (“Tomorrow the Lord Will Do Wonders Among You”)

• “The Lord blesses those who want to improve, who accept the need for commandments and try to keep them, who cherish Christlike virtues and strive to the best of their ability to acquire them. If you stumble in that pursuit, so does everyone; the Savior is there to help you keep going.”

• D&C 11:8: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, even as you desire of me so it shall be done unto you; and, if you desire, you shall be the means of doing much good in this generation.”

• “My brothers and sisters, the first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength—that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life. Indeed it is only with that reassurance burning in our soul that we can have the confidence to keep trying to improve, keep seeking forgiveness for our sins, and keep extending that grace to our neighbor.”

• “No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will” (George Q. Cannon).

• Isaiah 40:28-31: Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Lesson #3: How to Keep My Marriage and Other Relationships Strong

Kevin R. Duncan (“The Healing Ointment of Forgiveness”)

• “An unforgiving heart harbors so much needless pain.”

• D&C 82:23: “Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I will repay. Peace be with you; my blessings continue with you.”

• “God sees people not only as they currently are but also as they may become.”

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (“In Praise of Those Who Save”)

• “Strong marriage and family relationships…require constant, intentional work.”

• “Great marriages are built brick by brick, day after day, over a lifetime.”

• “Those who save marriages pull out the weeds and water the flowers.”

• “Whatever problems your family is facing, whatever you must do to solve them, the beginning and the end of the solution is charity, the pure love of Christ.”

• “The great enemy of charity is pride.”

• “Pride assumes evil intent where there is none.”

• “Even when you are not at fault—perhaps especially when you are not at fault—let love conquer pride.”

Lesson #4: General Words of Wisdom

Donald L. Hallstrom (“I Am a Child of God”)

• “You can have what you want, or you can have something better” (Jeffrey R. Holland).

Dieter F. Uchtdorf (“In Praise of Those Who Save”)

• “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” (Abraham Lincoln)

The Issue of Gender Identity

In my last post I discussed how the biology of men and women corresponds with the primary responsibilities God has given each gender in the family unit. We know through revelation from God to modern prophets and apostles that “Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.” 

Our society is currently very preoccupied with the issue of gender identity, trying to divorce a person's gender from the biological reality of being born with male body parts or female body parts. There are many facets to this argument, and I don't pretend to be acquainted with them all, nor do I intend to address them all, or even the majority of them, in this post. With the beliefs that I hold (that all people were created by God and that our identity as a son or daughter of God, male or female, existed before this life and will continue to exist after this life), the question that makes sense to me in this whole gender identity discussion is, what if you are not happy with your eternal gender identity and the primary responsibilities associated with it? What if you would rather protect and provide, but you are stuck with the job of creating bodies for and nurturing children instead because your eternal gender identity is female, for example?

When I first posed this question to myself, it seemed like a valid concern someone could have. As I thought about it some more, however, I realized that this is a very self-focused concern. When you turn your focus outward towards others, you realize what a blessing it is to have the ability to help and serve others in whatever ways are available to you. Having the ability to create a physical body for one of your spirit brothers or sisters and nourish that body is a blessing and a privilege--a beautiful opportunity to do something for someone else that they cannot do for themselves, a gift of immeasurable value you can give someone. 

When we are full of charity and our focus is on others, we put all of our physical abilities and other unique gifts and talents to use serving others, and in doing so we experience a fulness of joy as we become more like our heavenly parents. When you are seeing the world through the kind of selfless, eternal perspective God has, it is less important what your talents and abilities are and more important how you are using those talents and abilities to serve others. That is what is really important. And members of both genders are blessed with unique abilities and strengths that allow them to be of great service to their fellow beings and give them the opportunity to participate in God’s incredible work of salvation in important and unique ways. The more we embrace our identity as a son or daughter of God and seek to use and increase our unique  gifts and talents in the service of God and His children, the more fulfillment and joy we will find in our lives now and in eternity.

The Roles of Men and Women

Maybe it's because I just went through a pregnancy and am currently nursing a newborn, but the different roles of men and women are starting to make some basic biological sense to me. Regardless of whether men are generally stronger than women or whether women are generally more nurturing than men--both rather disputable generalizations--there are some basic, indisputable biological facts that make it pretty obvious why God assigned men the primary responsibility of protecting and providing for the family and women the primary responsibility of nurturing and caring for the children. 

First of all, if you're going to have a full-time protector and provider, it would make sense for that person to be the member of the family that does not frequently go through physical changes that render them less able to protect and provide. However physically/mentally/emotionally able you normally are at fulfilling these roles, your ability to do so, at least physically, can greatly diminish during pregnancy, particularly if you experience a lot of morning sickness and/or have a physically demanding job. The fact that biologically women are forced to do the brunt of the work of bringing a child into the world makes it seem appropriate that their husbands carry the greater responsibility of providing for the family and protecting their wife and children, especially at times when they are in more vulnerable physical states.

Secondly, once the child is here, it is the woman's body that produces the necessary means of nourishment for that child, so it makes the most biological sense for the woman to be the one who has the primary responsibility of caring for the child. Not that the man should not share the load of childcare to the extent that he is able, but as all nursing mothers know, no matter how willing the father is to help, there is a lot of baby care he simply cannot biologically provide, namely the hours of nursing that infants require.

Our modern society has found lots of ways to circumvent these biological facts that have helped define the roles of men and women throughout history (formula, breast pumps, grocery stores, jobs that require more brain power and less physical labor, etc.), but it is only these modern conveniences that have helped disconnect people from the biological realities that make the wisdom of the differences in the primary roles of men and women in the functioning of the family unit more obvious. 

Of course, there has been plenty of suppression of women throughout history that had nothing to do with biological realities, such as their right to vote, to own land, to get an education, to dress how they choose, to pursue whatever career field they would like to at times in their life when working does make sense or is necessary for them, to choose whom to marry, to choose to get out of harmful or unfulfilling relationships, etc. I'm not suggesting that all the traditional ways women have been treated are biologically justified or anything of the sort, or even that women should be forced to fulfill roles that their biological makeup seems to lend itself to. Obviously, everyone should have the choice of how they would like to live their own lives. All I’m saying is that the idea that in the family unit the man is more biologically suited to protect and provide for the family as his primary responsibility while the woman is more biologically suited to nurture and care for the children makes a lot of sense to me and that you don't have to be an anti-feminist jerk to suggest that perhaps that is the way God planned families to function under ideal circumstances. Yes, those are my thoughts.