Birth control (or lack thereof!)

What stood out to me the most this week were the prophetic quotes regarding birth control.  Having been raised Catholic, I still struggle with birth control.  It’s something that has been ingrained in me and it’s been hard to shift my thinking to an LDS stance.  

When we married, our original plan was to have children in five to seven years, but maybe even ten years, if work and travel were going well!  Instead, we found ourselves with a honeymoon baby, the doctor using our wedding night as the date of conception.  It completely threw us for a loop and I was even originally afraid to tell my husband!  We decided we would have two babies as close in age as possible, then leave a large gap and the possibility for more children down the road.  13 years later, we have seven children and that “large gap” was two years and two months, ha!  

Life hasn’t always been as easy as we originally planned and we certainly haven’t travelled the way I had intended...and I haven’t worked at all during our marriage!  But it has been a huge blessing.  Postponing children for work, school, or travel ended up not happening for us right off the bat, but our unexpected first baby helped pave a path where we were more easily able to keep that at bay.  

I really appreciated the Ezra Taft Benson quote, “The first commandment given to man was to multiply and replenish the earth with children.  That commandment have never been altered, modified, or cancelled.  The Lord did not say to multiply and replenish the earth if it is convenient, or if you are wealthy, or after you have gotten your schooling, or when there is peace on earth, or until you have four children.  The Bible says, ‘Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord...Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them…’  We believe God is glorified by having numerous children and a program of perfection for them.  So also will God glorify that husband and wife who have a large posterity and who have tried to raise them up in righteousness.”

We live in Southern California, where two is the normal number of children most couples have, though three is acceptable if your first two were the same gender.  When I was pregnant with my fourth baby, though, people began comparing us to the Duggar family.  We are absolutely an anomaly with seven, even in LDS circles.  I do not work and my husband is a police officer, so it’s not like we’re rolling in the dough in one of the nation’s most expensive places to live!  However, our babies have each been a beautiful blessing to our lives and we wouldn’t trade any of them.  Our pediatrician often reminds us that his patients will often say they wish they’d had more children, but that no one ever wishes they had fewer.  

I’m grateful for the prophetic reminders that we are meant to bear children and raise them up unto the Lord, no matter what society tells us.  I loved this reminder from J. Reuben Clark:  Sex desire was planted in us in order to be sure that our bodies would be begotten to house the spirits; the pleasures of gratifications of the desire is an incident, not the primary purpose of the desire.  Remember the prime purpose of sex desire is to beget children.  Sex gratification must be had at that hazard.

The Magic Six Hours

I really loved reading about The Magic Six Hours in Dr. Gottman’s “What Now?” afterword.  It was just a nice and succinct way to wrap everything up and to give quick, practical tips for improving a marriage.  It’s important and easy enough that I actually went out in search of a graphic or visual to wrap it all up!  I couldn’t find one, but am now determined to make one!  

Partings:  Before you say goodbye in the morning, make sure you learn one thing about what is happening in your spouse’s life that day.  

Reunions:  Hug and kiss your spouse in a kiss that lasts at least six seconds.  Also have stress-reducing conversation at the end of each weekday and make it last at least 20 minutes.  

Admiration and appreciation:  Communicate genuine affection and appreciation each day and genuinely express your love for them.  

Affection:  Be physically affectionate when together and embrace before going to bed.  Think of the goodnight kiss as a way to show forgiveness and tenderness to your partner.  

Weekly date:  Stay connected in this relaxing and romantic way.  Ask each other questions and try to build that relationship of trust.  

State of the union meeting:  Spend one hour a week talking about how your relationship went this week only.  This is a sacred space!  Talk about what went right, then express five appreciations.  Discuss any issues you had this week only.  Be sure to apply positive habits like gentle start-up and non-defensive listening.  End the session by asking each other what you can do to make the other person feel loved in the coming week.  

By breaking the six hours up into such easily digestible chunks, Gottman really sets us up for success.  I deal well with lists and check marks, so it’s a nice reminder of how I can work daily and weekly to improve my marriage.  

Agency and Anger

In his talk entitled “Agency and Anger, “ Elder Lynn G. Robbins puts forth the idea that anger is of the devil and that we have the agency to choose contention or to choose not to be angry.  This applies directly to marriage as we interact with our spouses and, by extension, our children.  “Unchecked, anger can quickly trigger an explosion of cruel words and other forms of emotional abuse that can scar a tender heart.  It is “that which cometh out of the mouth,” the Savior said; “this defileth a man” (Matt. 15:11).”  

I was raised in a house that always seemed angry and where my parents constantly yelled.  Unfortunately, this created an underlying set of bad habits within me.  When my oldest children were still young, I never raised my voice and always thought I would never treat them in the yelling manner in which my parents treated me.  As my kids grew older and more children came and life became busier and more stressful, the yelling started creeping in.  It’s something I absolutely hate about myself and I am very cognizant of it in my parenting.  I know that it is ineffective, that it damages relationships, and I know that I can’t even defend the practice.  And yet I do it!  

This quote from William Wilbanks really hit home:  “Aggression, … suppressing the anger, talking about it, screaming and yelling,” are all learned strategies in dealing with anger.  “We choose the one that has proved effective for us in the past.  Ever notice how seldom we lose control when frustrated by our boss, but how often we do when annoyed by friends or family?”  I’ve mentioned before how we seem able to turn our best behavior on for those who have less intimate relationships with us, yet we let the bad behavior flow freely with those closest to us.  

This reading, in addition to learning how damaging habits can affect our marital relationships, really struck a chord with me.  I need to work harder on remembering that I am in control of how I react to the emotions I feel and that I can build better strategies that will be more conducive to a healthier marriage and healthier home.  

Pride goeth before the fall.

I absolutely struggle with forgiveness.  I am very good at holding a grudge while my husband never, ever holds a grudge.  It sometimes drives me crazy!  He's the oldest of six kids born within seven years, but he's the only one who's active.  His siblings make some pretty awful choices and can be very nasty.  There are things that happened years and years ago that I still hold onto in the back of my head, yet my husband can forget something they said or did a week ago.  Another example is someone at church who wronged our family in a way that hurt our children.  She still won't acknowledge me, but my husband will go out of his way to say hello to her.  It used to drive me nuts.  "You should be mad at her!  You shouldn't be nice to her!"  I felt as though she would think he felt differently than I did and that somehow mattered, but it was pride getting in my way.  My husband knows exactly what she did and feels the same way I do, but he's able to let go of it to at least be cordial.  

We once played The Newlywed Game with a group of friends and one of the questions was about what annoys you most about your husband.  Everyone else said snoring except for one woman who said she hates that her husband leaves dishes in the sink to soak overnight.  When it got to me, Berek said, "I know what she'll say!  She'll say I'm too nice!"  Sure enough, my card said he was too kind and forgiving...which is a silly thing to complain about, HA!  That was the first time he ever (jokingly) asked if I felt that perhaps I was a beneficiary of his kind and forgiving nature.  OOPS!  I wish I could be as humble as he is!

"Our backs toward heaven."

What struck me most about this week’s reading was Dr. Goddard’s comment, “God has graciously given each of us an early warning system.  When we are feeling irked, annoyed, or irritated with our spouses, we have our backs toward heaven.”  

Elder Joe J. Christensen’s “Grapefruit Syndrome” is a real life story right out of my own life.  I once started going over a mental list of things I needed to address with my long-suffering husband when the thought struck me:  He’s never criticized me.  Ever.  Truly!  And I fall short in myriad ways.  With seven young children, I already have a very full plate, but then I volunteer as room parent, am on the school board, take classes online, have demanding callings, so on and so forth.  There are loads of ways in which I drop the ball in my homemaking duties and yet he never calls me out on it.  He never lectures me about the laundry piled on the couch or the dirty dishes in the sink.  

I am a difficult person to live with.  When I get overwhelmed or overstimulated, it’s my defense mechanism to become easily annoyed with others and to even lash out at times.  “Any time we feel irritated with our spouses, that irritation is not an invitation to call our spouses to repentance but an invitation to call ourselves to repent.  We are irritated because of our own lack of faith and humility.”  I would add that there are other reasons we are irritated with ourselves, but it’s key to me that the true irritation is with myself.  

It’s strong imagery for me to consider turning away from my husband is also turning my back to heaven.  It is choosing to be less Christlike, choosing to be less refined.  Refinement ran through my head a lot while reading our selections this week and I was pleased to read that Dr. Goddard comments that we can refine ourselves to bless others around us, especially those with whom we have made sacred covenants.