Kids 2 Adults

                In America, it is nearly impossible to live here and not be exposed to some kind of sexual content.  We are constantly bombarded by sex on television, music, posters, magazines, and even friends. It has created one of the worst confusions that our generation has ever seen.

                Because of all these messages about sex everywhere, many young people (children and teens) don't understand the true meaning of what sex is and why it exists. As far as I can tell, the young have always wanted to grow up faster. They want to be like their role models, be independent, and able to have more freedoms. Sex is considered a "mature" action. Since kids want to grow up so quickly, they feel that if they have sex, they have reached "adulthood" and that independence that they crave.

                Like mentioned earlier, sex is so readily available that children can learn about it before they can understand it. Many people complain about how we have so many teenagers being sexually active and try to counteract it by giving them all this information on how to do it properly so as to have less damaging effects (pregnancies, STDs, etc). But the heart of the problem is elsewhere.

                There is a lack of understanding of relationships. If we cannot help them comprehend what  proper relationships with others are, we will never make a dent on the issue. These young people don't know what it means to have a true, mature, successful relationship. So once we can help them realize what relationships are for, what it really means to love someone, etc; only then can we help them become that true "mature" and independent person they long to be.

Mehrigge is what bwings us togefah today

Someone once told me that the happiest state of being is when someone is happily married, next happily single, then unhappily single and finally unhappily married. There are huge social and even personal pressure to find a significant other; a person that will understand and love us. But it's a big risk putting ourselves out there. If we succeed, we can have the most joy in this life, but if failed, we can get in a horrible state of misery. How do we avoid this risk? The thing is, we can't avoid it, we were never meant to. 2 Nephi 2 discusses how there must be Oposition on all things. If we didn't have this conflict, we would never learn and grow and our agency would be limited. Now this is not to say that we will all fail just so we can learn. There are definitely ways that we can help our marriages to succeed. Here's a few tips: 1. Start it Right. Make sure to have a proper meaningful proposal. Make clear family boundaries between the families that you are becoming one of your own. 2. Being Involved. When it comes to the wedding, picking the house, when expecting each child, etc. Stay connected in the big and little thing (talking about your day). We'll leave it with those things for now. For those of you who have personal or side line insight on what has best helped or destroyed a marriage, please sure with the rest of us. There's no reason to keep such valuable information to ourselves.

Your Love Story

Every classic fairy tale has a magical love story where the beautiful maiden meets her prince charming momentarily before they are taken from each other. It's love at first sight and prince charming must then save his princess. And once they have both fought valiantly, they ride off into the sunset and "live happily ever after."

Although these tales teach us priceless lessons and values to apply to our lives, the real way that romance works isn't one of them. We all ask ourselves, "How do you know when you're in love?" If you are basing your findings on Cinderella or Snow White, I'm afraid you are going to find it nearly, if not wholly, impossible to find Mr. Right.

What is love? How do we know when we love someone. My greatest findings this week were those differing definitions given by the Greeks. Our book gave us 4 different types of love; Agape, Storge, Eros, and Philia.

Agape is the love that we have for all mankind, whether they like them or not. Storge is that love that a parent has for their child, the kind where we love the person no matter what they are like. Eros is the kind in those classic fairy tales, the attraction between 2 people. And finally we have Philia that is shared between 2 friends.

If we combine these 4 different definitions of love, we can find our prince or princess. It's not all about "love" at first sight. True love comes in many different forms and grows stronger in each area over time. That is where we get our hard worked for, but incredibly worth it "happily ever after".

Same Doesn't Add to Equal

This week we talked about gender (the differences and similarities). We watched a video about how we are trying to make men and women equal. When the film was originally made, fighting for equallity didn't exactly mean equal. Women were fighting for the right to pretty much be better than the men (they could do all that women can do and also the men). This of course aggravated the men because it attempted to take them out of the equation.

The movie showed that they lowered the standards for women in fields like the armed force and firefighting. Some of the women who wanted to go into these fields couldn't lift the equipment. They couldn't cut a log in half. To me, lowering the eligibility for women is horrible. That's like asking for a doctor who barely passed their medical exams verses the doctor who worked hard and got straight A's.

Don't get me wrong, if the woman can reach the terms the men are required to reach, I'd say all the more power to them. But I don't want the value of my life or that of my friends and family lowered for these so called "equal rights".

Someone told me the argument that in The Family: A Proclamation to the World, it made it easier to avoid anything that didn't fit in our "job" description as male and female. That it was a way out so men didn't have to nurture the children, or women didn't have to provide or preside. In this document, it states that men and women are to have equal part in this. So what do we mean by equal?

I believe equal and same aren't identical as we tend to think. We need to think of all of the differences we have as men and women and enhance them. Use them to build the world into a unique and wonderful place, the way the Lord intended it.