Welcome to Our Family Time

Last week was a grand Thanksgiving Holiday. This thanksgiving was dedicated to a Hart Family Reunion celebrating the 50th anniversary of my Grandma and Grandpa Hart.

Can you believe it?

50 years!

50 years later they have 5 kids. 5 sons/daughters in law. 16 grandchildren. And more love than they could have imagined the day of their marriage.

Our family time included

-A Thanksgiving Feast

-A Post Thanksgiving Feast Football Game.

-Family Bingo

-Sharing Stories

-A Toast

-Presents for All

-Pedicures, Golf, and Scavenger Hunts

-Family Pictures Galore

-Good times around the good family table

It was all a lot of fun. And we created a lot of good memories. I love my family. I can't imagine not being with them to celebrate this Holiday season. I can't imagine not knowing that we can be together forever. And I believe that is truly what we should remember during the times we are together. Sure pictures and games and wonderful things but let us not get caught up in these activities, for they would not mean much if we did not have an amazing family to share it with. I know the events may bring back great moments of reminiscing, but some of my most quality family times have been spent in quiet hours where there is no pressure of activities. In these moments I have shared dreams and goals with those I hold closest to me. In these moments I have learned about others as they too have dreams and goals. In these moments I have built a deep trust and connection with my family members.

I believe that is what family time is all about.

Families Can Be Together Forever

I believe this is my last week of posting for school related purposes. I have not even had the chance to cover many of the joys that pertain to marriage. I haven't even started in on the family unit. Luckily this blog does not have to end when I turn in my final report.

I hope yesterdays blog was a good introduction into the idea of the family unit.

In primary we use to sing a song that is called families can be together forever. This is a solid and beautiful doctrine we believe as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. When parents are sealed in the holy temples children are born in a unit that overcomes death and can be eternal. There is pain and sorrow in death, but when we understand this truth there is also a sweet surety that death is not the end. We also have a sense of added desire to live worthy so that we might reunite with family members that have left this mortal state.

I have never had children, but I have been a child. I have felt success in my life. As I have pondered my success I believe that much of it came because I was blessed with a good family life. My mother and father were married in the Idaho Falls Temple, sealed for eternity. They were actively involved in our lives as children. They built traditions which strengthened our family unit. They spent time being good parents. They helped my brothers and I to become good and dear friends. I look to them as a great example of marriage as well as a great example of parenthood. They sacrificed for us. I am so thankful that we can be together forever.

I was reading in a book about this. I quote "Nothing brings more light to a child's face than the sacred assurance that he can be together, forever, with his family. Conversely, nothing tears at his heart more than sensing that the much-promised family belonging may be slipping from his grasp. We do not marry for ourselves alone. Our children are entitled to expect that we live not only for our future but for theirs."

I just know that marriage between a man and a woman that will righteously rear their children is most important, especially in our society today. I know that family units can bring the most happiness in this life. We can be very successful in other areas of this life, but the sweetest joy comes in success in family life.

Thanks Again!

Thanksgiving week has come and gone. To start the week off right I asked one thing of you. Be thankful for your significant other. In the rush of this thing called life I forgot something else to be thankful for. You see most of my posts have been about a partnership that we find in marriage. The whole one man one woman union that is quite beautiful. But what would that union be without a family to back it up? What would it be without crazy kids?

This last week I was reminded how thankful I am for my family. Not only my immediate family, but also my extended family.

Sometimes when I am here all by myself at college I have moments of forgetfulness because what I am doing here kind of revolves around me. I don't want to be prideful or selfish. But if I were to tell the truth what I do is a lot for me. I go to my classes. I grocery shop for me. I study for my tests. Not that I didn't do that before either. What I am really trying to say is that the distance that separates my family and I contributes to my forgetting. But this forgetting has to be momentary because I am so thankful for my family. They do so much for me. They are the reason I am able to be attending BYU and taking my classes, and doing my grocery shopping. I can't imagine accomplishing anything without them.

As we gathered together for Thanksgiving I was reminded just how much they do for me. I was reminded just how much I love them. I was reminded just how much I am thankful for them. I sure do love my crazy family.

Thank You Very Much

Tis the season to be extra thankful. During this time we list everything we are thankful for.

I am so thankful for...

education, life, my apartment, my roommates, my ward, my bishop, neighbors that let me borrow their computer chargers, clothes, snow, christmas music, thanksgiving feasts, adventures, the Savior, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, ect.

I am also so thankful for my family.

We should all be extremely thankful for those people in our lives that are family whether they are blood related or not. We should also be thankful for our significant other if he or she exists.

Tis the season to express your gratitude to him or her.

I like to observe couples married and dating, old and young, couples that are in different periods of their lives. I like to see how they show their gratitude for each other. I observe the smile that follows a proclamation of gratitude. It makes me so happy. When we express gratitude we spread the joy.

So when you are perturbed by the one in your life, or your brothers, sisters, roommates, best friends, ect, just think of all the things you are thankful for because they are in your life. This gratitude will bring you joy and you will be more able to acknowledge the blessings they bring in your life.

I believe gratitude is an essential in marriage, and in life.

Totally Devoted To You!

Devotion. After you take the leap of faith and commit to the one and only, your sweetheart of eternity, it is all about devotion. What is love without commitment? Passion I believe. And that is not enough for marriage.

I looked up devotion on dictionary.com. Here are the results.

profound dedication

earnest attachment to a cause, person, ect.

then came the synonyms

zeal, ardor. see love.

See love. Yes love and devotion, devotion and love. It just goes together. They match. They combine. The flourish in each others presence.

It is profound and earnest.

It makes love real.

What Do You Say To Taking Chances?

Well I was just considering today another characteristic that might be included in marriage, and I am not quite sure how to word it correctly. The essential idea of this characteristic is that the partners in the marriage are willing to overcome fear and risk it all. You see when I say that it sounds immature and irrational, but that is not the kind of risk taking I am talking about. I am thinking more along the lines of intelligent risk taking. Let me back this up with an example or two.

Let's imagine you meet this boy or girl and he or she is everything you have ever dreamed of and wanted. Practically perfect in every way. Then you get to know him or her and a flaw here and there comes through but they are minor and you are in love so no big deal. Then he brings up the marriage question and it is all of the sudden something real and almost tangible and you have to consider if you love them enough to look past the flaws you have seen come through and you have to consider if he has the essentials of the eternal companion and if you work well together. Really you must consider could we make it? And even if you are 99.9% sure you want to be with the person sitting across from you for the rest of your life and into eternity there might be a small moment of fear. Or maybe you are not sure at all and there is a large moment of fear. In either of these circumstances there has to be a leap from fear to faith. I was reading a book that said "covenant marriage requires a total leap of faith." So maybe it is not so much a risk as it is a leap. A real leap into an unknown world. All of our lives up until that point our mindset is on dating dating dating to find the right person. What happens when we find them. We have to shift from the dating dating dating to the commitment commitment commitment mindset. And it is different. And maybe I am the only person in the world that thinks this, but I think it is a little scary too.

What if you are walking along in this life and the right person for you is there but you fail to recognize it. Or is there more than one right person so if you miss the first chance you get a second shot. But what if the first chance was a more compatible choice and you missed it. Or what if you only get one chance. What if you don't have the guts to take the leap of faith and you lose the one thing you have always wanted. What if you are so focused on other goals and opportunities that you miss your greatest goal and opportunity even if he is standing on your doorstep knocking. What if you never answer.

Again, I might be the only person in the whole world that considers this but I think in order to change your status on facebook from relationship to engaged to married there has to be a moment where you overcome fear and take that leap of faith.

I feel like I just went on a rant. And you probably think I am done. I am not.

All the sudden you are married and practically perfect in every way comes screeching to a halt because you encounter your first major life changing decision... now what? You will probably have to take a chance somewhere along the line if you are following your instinct and trusting that what you feel is right.

So maybe in the end this overcoming fear and risking it all is really a leap of faith and trusting in the knowledge you have been given that what you are doing is right.

Honesty is the Best Policy.

Really truly it is.

Honesty has a friend also. Her name is trust.

2 important, no vital characteristics in marriage. Without honestly in the relationship there can be no trust. Dishonestly severs those connections that were built in trust. Connections of trust take a long time to build, but only a moment to break.

Be honest in all things.

I was reading my LDS Marriage and Families manual tonight and have been reading a lot of other material pertaining to marriages recently and finances have been mentioned many times in my reading. Financial honesty is an extremely important issue because it seems to be the cause of much contention and divorce.

This post is a little all over the place mainly because I am a little all over the place all the time. With that said. I think that we as humans all have this desire to be trusted by other people. I know I do. I have always felt that way. I have always wanted to be the person that other people knew they could trust and come to talk to whenever about whatever. I hope I have been good about doing that. But consider for a moment how hard it would be for others to trust me if they knew I wasn't honest. Overall it would just be a bad situation. And I think we all know that. I mean I am pretty sure we learned it in kindergarten.

So why do you think we struggle with it?

Or maybe lots of people really don't struggle with it. Maybe it is just because it is so important that if you do struggle with it, it has far reaching and terribly negative effects.

The moral of this all over the place blog is found in the title.

Just remember Honestly (in everything, including married life) is the best policy.

The Cake Has Been Cut.

The Deal has been Sealed.

You are married. Now what? A little something called life. In fact it is a lot of something called the rest of your life, and eternity. Well how do you make that work? I want to spend a couple of days addressing ideas of how to make marriage work. (As if I knew). I will mostly take the perspective of the experiences people who are actually married have shared with me.

There are a lot of small things that make marriage work, but I believe there are also a lot of essential things that have to be in place in marriages or else there is no hope of survival.

The first one I would like to address is the idea of Sacrifice.

Sacrifice is huge in a marriage. For most of ones life, up to the point of marriage, one tends to think of themself. What do I need? What makes me happy? What do I want to eat for dinner?

I have found in college that "I" is even more extreme. I am thinking about my grades. About my major. About my life plan. And although I love my roommates, the rest of my life is not in Allred 11 with them. But when it comes to marriage the rest of your life is with that one special boy/ girl. So how do we transition from the me perspective to the we perspective? Sacrifice.

Sacrifice includes giving up some things that can be small or significant. Sacrifice is combinding dreams, goals, or ambitions. Sacrifice is not limiting your potential, but it is seeking to join in reaching potential. Marriage doesn't mean we have to give up everything for the other person, but we will have to give up some things.

For example (and this is really simple but true) when married one will probably have to give up Thanksgiving Dinner with ones family every other year, perhaps more often, perhaps less.

Sacrifice is not a bad thing at all either. I sometimes feel that when we say we have to sacrifice something it is negative. Sacrificing can be positive and wonderful. You might have to sacrifice extended family time at Christmas, but that doesn't mean you will not create your own traditions as husband and wife. And those traditions will become so meaningful to the partnership and family.

So learn to sacrifice. And learn to sacrifice in love and patience. Know that if you sacrifice something now, the future may hold opportunities to obtain that which you sacrificed. Think of sacrificing as leaving things on hold because you know what is most important and what you need to do for your marriage. We may not be able to have everything we have ever wanted right now, but give it time, it will come if we are doing what is right and placing priority on the right things.

Remember Dallin H. Oaks good, better, best talk? If not check it out at lds.org. And as you sacrifice keep those ideas in mind.

Marriage Bring Us Together

I didn't really interview anyone about this whole marriage ordeal.

But we talked about marriage in my SFL class today. And it was really interesting. So I thought I would share.

Mostly we were talking about rituals in family life. One of the rituals we were talking about was the actual marriage. Through this ritual we change our membership in the family. We are now a part of another family as well as createing our own family. I was thinking about this marriage ritual. Although across cultures there are different processes and traditions as we join two people together, the marriage has the same function. I believe marriage is beautiful. In every case we join two people together who love each other and promise to care for each other. It is just really neat.

I was reading this book a little bit ago. It was describing how a young couple just got married and he kissed the bride and were announced as husband and wife, the whole enchaldia. Then the person who officiated the wedding leaned into the couple ask queitly asked "Well, how do you like married life so far?" I just thought that was so cute. Admist the wedding, the cake, the pictures, the reception, the people this ritual might lose the meaning it holds. It is just all about two people. Who are going to be together forever. It is a ritual we acknowledge with happiness.

I think that is the way things should be.

Because Love Can Last Forever.

You know, in my personal life right now, I am not a witness to a whole lot of marriages. Since the topic of the week is marriage (you know the actual marriage where we usually spend a whole day in grand celebration) and I have not been able to witness a marriage in the last week, I would like to dig deep into my memory in order to seek an example or observation I have made about marriage.

First I have only been to a few weddings or receptions. So I am not really an expert. I have talked a lot about different marriages. So I am not really an expert. I have watched a plethora of bridal shows. So I am not really an expert. I have also completely planned my perfect marriage. So I am not really an expert. With that said.

I have come to the conclusion that the only perfect way to go in this whole marriage ordeal is to take it to the temple. From watching bridal shows in the real non mormon world there is stress in finding the perfect location to be married. Luxury is expensive. Beauty does not come cheap. The temple is the ultimate in perfect beauty. If you have ever been through an open house you might have an idea what I mean. The sealing room, I believe, captures the essence of what marriage is truly about, because in its simple beauty it does not detract from the words spoken at the ceremony, it only adds to those things said (I think?).

I have witnessed a civil wedding and also seen people as they exit the temple doors. There is a different spirit in these two occurrences. Til death do us part are the words spoken in a civil ceremony. The knowledge I have of forever families allows me to know that marriages performed in the temple are for eternity. I believe you can feel the difference of couples that get married for life and couples that know they can be together for eternity. I am not in any way saying that civil marriages cannot be full happiness. Nor am I saying that civil marriages cannot lead to a life of pure joy and goodness. I am only saying they lack one aspect that truly changes the marriage. And it is one aspect I do not want to be left without.

Marriages in the temple are special. I have never been to one. I have walked through a sealing room though. And I have talked to people who have. And I have a testimony that marriages and families can be together forever because of the sealing of husband and wife at the right time, in the right place, and by the right authority.

Forever.

James E. Faust said something along these lines. It is hard to understand what is outside of our experience. Every week I get a little further outside of my experience. This week I would like to spend learning about Marriage. Marriage is outside of my experience. Thus I only know as much as I have learned from family, from observation, from textbooks, and from the experiences others share with me. Although all of these things hold a lot of validity, it is still out of my experience so I will not be able to capture marriage as a whole. I still believe it is worth giving a try.

Marriage is probably the most influential and thus most important decision you will make in your life. We probably shouldn't marry because we are in love with being in love. And you probably should not marry someone you have not dated. But it is important to get married and do it right.

Doing it right encompasses these three things: the right person, the right place, the right time. One thing about marriage is that two of these three aspects will be different for everyone. The right place will hopefully be in a temple where we can be married for time and eternity. The right person will obviously and hopefully be different for every person. And finding that right person is up to everyone individually. And since there is no specified age of marriage, although there is a common time span, the right time differs.

Even with these three differences there are some commonalities. Marry someone that makes you better than you are. Someone that inspires you. Someone that uplifts you. Someone that compliments you. Someone that has common values, aspirations, goals. Marry someone you trust. Marry someone you are in true love with.

Defining True Love.

I am not quite sure you can put a definition on love. But I asked a couple of people to try.

I used to think that true love felt like running through the finish line in first place every single day. Now I think that true love is like running through the finish line dead last but you are the happiest person alive because of who is waiting with open arms for you on the other side. Like anything in life there are challenges and trials and we are not always going to have it all,but when you know that someone is always waiting there for you and cheering you on and loves you no matter what happens or what place you are in....is definitely true love to me.

When you both care about the other person more than yourself, then you have true love.

My definition is a strong connection and trust that overcomes all fears. And when you even think of that person you can't help but smile.

It really is working together with somene and caring for someone more than yourself.

Love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection.

Love is knowing their imperfections and still loving them.

True love as giving your whole heart to someone without expectation of reward.

Affectionate concern for the well-being of others.

The love of which the Lord speaks of is not only physical attraction, but also faith, confidence, understanding, and partnership. It is cleanliness of life and sacrifice and unselfishness. This kind of love never tires nor wanes.

I love love.

Sure Do Love You!

True Love.

This sunday we got to meet together as a relief society for our bishop to give us a lesson. His lesson was on love. Listening to his prepared statement and ideas I couldn't help but think he knows this all from experience because he has true love for his sweet wife. There was a point when he was telling us that sometimes he has to take business trips and it is really hard to be away from his wife for too long. He said when he got home he always loved to just give her a big hug and express that he was so happy to be home. Mostly because he could be back with her. I love those kind of sweet stories. I believe that is true love.

I want to consider the idea that love is not thrust upon you when the time is right. It is something to be sought after and cultivated. I have learned that it is truly a choice you make. It requires work and effort as well as a natural affection towards someone. I kind of always thought that falling in and out of love was something that happened that you didn't really have control of. But we do have control and we can choose. That fact brings me comfort because even if it is hard I can choose to love.

Not having much experience on the marriage end of the spectrum I would like to look at my family life. I have an older brother and a younger brother both whom I love dearly and both who drive me crazy 95% of the time. At times I think it would be easy for me to say "I did not sign up for this. Get me out of here." At these moments I try to remember that I have control of what I do and I still love them in spite of the annoyances they are. After I choose that path, in a twist of fate one of them might find a moment of seriousness and kindness towards me and I will feel amazingly blessed that I was given two wonderfully strong brothers who are good boys and good examples.

Those times help me to remember to choose to love. The choice is difficult at times but the consequences are absolutely worth it.