my thoughts: on family

What a great training-ground, right?  I mean, for real... what better way to pass on important knowledge, both spiritual and temporal?  Can you think of one?  Most of the institutions established for much the same purpose really do a barely adequate job.

I believe that the family has been ordained and organized by God.  Among his innumerable purposes for families, I believe we are meant to learn all the important lessons about God and his plan... the purpose for our lives.  He wants us to have folks we care about with whom to practice the most important functions of a society.

Hopefully we learn about honesty being the best policy without lying and having to rebuild lost trust.  We learn about consequences, both natural and imposed by parents who are our very first authority figures.  We learn about leaders and how to lead and how important our example may be.  We learn about love, like, joy, happiness, faith, hope, and so many other positives and their opposite.

As a tale from Tori... when I was about 24, I thought I had improved dramatically in patience.  I just really didn't get angry much or easily.  By the time I'd been married for a year or two, I realized how impatient I yet was.  Another couple years, and our first child, proved to me in wholly new and amazing ways how far I had to go to become truly patient.  Each additional child has revealed to me how sorely lacking in patience I really have been all along!  So... as an example that is also true of many other things, family provides growth opportunities.  Family enables us, when we are willing, to see into ourselves more fully... as if shining a light into the corners we didn't pay attention to before.  It is revealing and ripe with potential for transformation.

Our family of origin as well as the family we form when we marry, potentially provide us with more opportunities of this sort than any other single relationship.  Trial and blessing all in one... as must needs be since opposition is necessary to true and deep understanding.

my thoughts: on marriage

If you remember my thoughts on the purpose of life, you might recall that I believe one purpose of life is to marry and have children.  I believe marriage is a figurative house, spiritually built by three (the man, woman, and God) individuals who promise God before other humans that they will be faithful to each other and potential offspring.  I believe that the energy of creation of the marriage is an actual spiritual shield and provides a form of protection for the children that simply isn't there without marriage.

My life has provided some specific experiences through which I have felt the reality that marriage is not just an ephemeral idea or just a word.  It is a living, breathing house for those joined together and the children they bring into it.  It is a sort of being.  It is more than just those who began it, even if there are never children brought into it.  The time and energy put into the relationship between the two who began it actually build rooms and beautify the house that the marriage is or can be.  This is the exact thing that Proverbs 14:1 is referring to when it says, "Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands."

It is daunting to realize the problems in marriage.  Even more difficult to realize that the only person whose problems we can ever improve are our own.  I know, though, that as we improve ourselves, our spouse will improve, too.  That's a result of the truth in the Mandelbrot Set and the reality of our spirits being tied together.  There are exceptions, of course.  Those are very sad, especially when one partner wants to make it work and the other will not consider it.  In general, though, as we focus on fixing what we actually can (ourselves), our partner will improve basically all on their own.  How awesome is that?

Marriage.  Defined by God.  And created as an awesome vehicle for self improvement!  We realize how far we have to go when we unite with another person, don't we?  I know I sure did.

What do you think of marriage?