Dost Thou Hearest Me Yet?

My maternal grandparents on their wedding day

 

July 16, 2016

During this, my final semester in the Pathway program, we have been studying:  “?The Family – A Proclamation to the World.” Through the weeks of study and discussion and reading – oh, so MUCH reading – my understanding of the nature of human beings and our place in the world created by our Father in Heaven hasn’t just grown but also matured.

When I was a little girl, our family was solicited by some adults from a nearby church, looking for children the parents might wish to attend the church. My parents agreed, and each Sunday I would be picked up by a bus and taken to the church to attend. This both gratifies and horrifies at the same time! I am grateful because this gave me an early introduction to God and led to a lifelong study of Him and His Son, Jesus Christ. I expect I’ll live for many more decades, because I have only scratched the surface.

About half a dozen years later, living in a smaller town by then, I was introduced to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My family’s learning about the Church opened my world exponentially. Suddenly I had structure and guidelines in my life that made me feel very comfortable and safe. I also had direction. I knew who I wanted to be and who I wanted to marry (well, I had the idea of him in my mind). I was a little muddled on what I wanted to study if allowed the opportunity to go to college.

Unfortunately, my plans didn’t even come close to gelling as I grew older. It seems it’s been an agonizing uphill battle since, and I wonder many times a day why it is so hard and how I let it end up this way.

And then came the third semester of Pathway. Step by step I have studied the Proclamation and felt my testimony grow. I have been learning the “whys” of all the things I now believe. I feel as though those answers have given solid foundation to my testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Almost 20 years ago I met a man who was every bit as imperfect as I, and maybe more so than I realized, what with the stars in my eyes those first few months. Despite our best intentions, we ended up hitching ourselves to the same star and purposefully stepping out on what we hoped would be a wonderful, healing journey.

I will forever be grateful for the concept of Eternal families. While my faith in this concept caused me to hang on longer than I should in a dismal marriage that was never good, it has also helped me to hold onto to the precious treasure I now have in my husband and our marriage, despite the fact that all life around us conspired to pull us apart.

The Proclamation teaches that men and women were created and later born to be just that:  Men and women! Accepting myself with all my imperfections includes accepting that I am me, and that me is a woman. I am grateful to never have been saddled with the burden of questioning my gender identity because I know there is really no question in my Father’s eyes. 

Another thing we are taught by the Proclamation is that men and women have equal but different roles in the very worthy goal of marrying and raising a family. It has been a hard thing for me to study the Proclamation at a time where I can look back on a life of regret, but I find courage in knowing that I am not alone in my struggles.

Thursday we attended the wedding festivities for my sister-in-law, who had waited and prepared for many years before finally meeting someone who was worthy of her. In those few days, I was able to see in them the knowledge that our Father in Heaven knows them, loves them, and wants them to a righteous husband and wife. For them, this is truly the very beginning of lifetimes of opportunity and joy. As any “old” married couple, my husband and I were reminded of our commitments to one another and to that same Father in Heaven as well as His to us. There is peace in that knowledge.

Hey, You Talkin' to Me?

 

July 5, 2016 

 

Years ago I read Gary Chapman’s Book "The 5 Love Languages” after someone did a presentation in a Relief Society evening class. I was so intrigued by it that I went out and bought the book. I learned that my main love language is acts of service, following closely by quality time and then a little farther down was physical touch. All these years I have assumed that my husband’s main love language is physical touch. We hold hands all the time and enjoy being in physical contact. Turns out that was probably mostly me after all. It ranks about third on his list. In fact, his main love language is quality time. Interesting. The day he took the test, we had been out going to garage sales and basically hanging out, as we like to do. I remarked to him that we can make grocery shopping a date. Guess it does have that kind of importance to him.

In my college course this semester I designed a project with the love languages in mind. I planned to make sure over the course of two weeks to “speak” to my husband in his language at least three times. Because I was thinking his language was physical touch, I decided to make sure to place my hand on his arm or run my fingers through his hair whenever I thought of it. This is my normal behavior, so it wasn’t much of a stretch for me. Unwittingly I also did things that speak his actual love language.

Here’s the kicker:  The day after I turned in my gathering report in which I declared my project for this unit, something happened that made me furious. I didn't want to be near my husband, let alone touch him. I even had a moment of fantasizing what it would be like to leave him. After all, I have a full-time job. And then I remembered my project. Ugh. I think I needed about 24 hours to shake myself and get my priorities and feelings straight. I didn't change my behavior much from what I usually do, but I was more conscious of what I was doing and looking to see my husband's reactions, if any. Within a day or two I realized that my "mad" had gone away far more quickly than I had expected. I seriously believed I would still be mad at this time. Instead, I can see that I appreciate him even more than I did before working on this project.

I definitely notice the things he does around the house, not to mention his phenomenal talent as a photographer and cook and lots of other things – I am constantly telling him how awesome he is. He told me, "That's one of the things I love about you." I talk to him all the time about my schoolwork, so he knew about my project. It still surprises me to see him doing things that I know were inspired by what we had talked about and the wishes I might have. I told him that I really wish for diamonds, so we'll see where that goes -- hahaha!

Some things I learned in my college class as we discussed this project:

• Learning to understand our family members helps us to strengthen our relationships in a way that truly speaks to them
• When we know our own love languages, we can recognize what others in our family might do in order to speak those languages and learn how to encourage that
• When faced with a situation or relationship that is tough, we can look at the person and ask, "What can I do for you?"
• When we put ourselves in a subordinate position; i.e., places our loved ones and their needs and desires before ours, we are learning to speak the language of the Savior (LOVE this!)
• This project relates to the Proclamation because "husband and wife are to love each other and their children," it is our "solemn responsibility." What better way to do so?
• Knowing others' languages helps us to get along
• "It's not all about me”

Genderally Speaking

May 17, 2016

I had five children in my first marriage. The order was girl, girl, boy, girl, and girl. My then-husband was so disappointed when I told him our first was a girl. He was on the road to work (about two hours away) when I went to the hospital. This was before cell phones, so I was unable to get ahold of him so he could be there. When he finally called me, our daughter had been born, and his first words to me were, “Is it a boy?” I replied, “No, but she’s so beautiful!” After our second daughter was born, I think we both assumed we would be the parents of girls. Then our son was born, and we kept saying to one another, “We have a boy!” I can’t say what exactly he meant when he said it, but I know that I was just delighted to try my hand at raising a son and had been resigned that the Lord didn’t have that on the schedule for me.

That boy was born 28 years ago. His sisters are 34, 31, 25 and 22, three of whom are married. There was something completely different about him even when he was a baby. He was drawn to different kinds of activities than those that drew the attention of my girls. Some of the girls liked “girly” things, some were less interested. Our son was about 300% boy, as I described him. He was loud, rowdy, and such a handful. As he became older, I realized that there was really nothing that I was teaching him about what to like and dislike. He has ADHD, and it was particularly challenging in his case. 

I later had another boy and another girl with my current husband. They, too, are very different. Neither is “all boy” or “all girl,” but they have strong tendencies that give a nod to their respective genders. The things that keep their attention and which fill their time sometimes blend, but mostly they are distinct individuals.

When I think of myself as a little girl, I remember being raised in a family where gender roles were more rigidly defined, but I was secretly (still am!) glad to be a girl because I didn’t want to have the responsibilities the boys had and would have as they grew older. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling. I knew I was a girl, and I was glad to be a girl. It never occurred to me that I could or should be a boy. That seems to me like my cats feeling like they should really have been born dogs and living a dog’s life. To be honest, though, most of us would love to live a dog’s life now and then.

Speaking of dogs, we currently have two dogs. Harley is a young male yellow Lab/Collie mix; Shadow is a 10-year-old female Siberian Husky. We rescued Harley when he was nine months old. He had been in an abusive situation. One month later we adopted Shadow from our neighbor who had to move to an apartment. Not only did Shadow basically teach Harley how to be a dog, we have had our own in-home gender study going on with the two dogs.

Harley is rough and tumble and completely oblivious to the needs of and affection for Shadow. Shadow, to Harley, is his buddy. They like to play, but it’s mostly Harley running circles around Shadow while she pretends she can’t take him with one fell swoop. She is very much like a mother even though she has never had any puppies. Our family took in a new mother kitty and her four tiny kittens last year. Harley was very curious about them, and he has always been gentle. Shadow surprised us because she was so gentle and seemed to treat the kittens the way their mother did. She was patient with them and gave them loving licks when they would come near her. We still have three of the kittens, who are a year old now. When Shadow walks by them, she will often reach out and give them a love-lick. Harley’s form of affection seems to be putting the entire head of a cat in his mouth (not in a violent way but a playful one).

In our household my husband and I share the task of nurturing our children. I am usually more gentle in my approach, but he has the wisdom to see things I miss. I have a full-time job, but he has many jobs and spends an awful lot of time trying to keep the plates spinning. He clearly takes his role as the head of the home very seriously. I, on the other hand, am secretly glad that I don’t have to be the sole decision maker for the family! We are all very, very grateful that, while I do the “traditional” mom job of all the family laundry, he does all of the cooking. His approach to cooking is a beautiful thing, one which my tummy greatly appreciates!

I am me. I am a product of my upbringing but mostly who I am chemically, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I have a sense that my spirit existed before I was born. I had the sense before I joined the Church. That same sense tells me that when I leave this earth, my spirit will still be me because my spirit is who I am. I like to think of my body as a handy carrying case.

The many scriptural accounts of the creation tell us that God created us as male and female. I have to wonder, if He created us that way, wouldn’t it make sense that he had more in his plan for each gender rather than just the physical creation of other males and females?

While the history of mankind (even the fact that we emphasize the “man” portion of the word as if it means just male and not human) is filled with mischaracterization of God’s design for male and female, I feel that, like many other issues that have been skewed one way or the other, we are going past the mark and trying to right a wrong by inserting another wrong that our society is defining as a “right.” Male lawyers and female lawyers might understand the law equally well, but each brings a different leaning to their interpretation, and that is what helps make it more well rounded.

We are trying to teach the young girls in our society that they are capable and beautiful and “enough.” At the same time, our media tends to send the message that boys are the root cause of our society’s ills, especially as they grow to be men. I believe that in order to be equal, we need to be treated as though each gender is capable of different things that are all needed to keep the world going.