As Christ Also Loved the Church

Two of the major transitions in a woman’s life involve  gaining a mother-in-law and becoming one. Mothers-in-law have a bad reputation. They’re the butt of hundreds, maybe thousands, of jokes. From these jokes, you can discover that society thinks of mothers-in-law as   judgmental,  demanding,  domineering,  entitled,  self-Involved,    unattractive,  angry, and (especially)  unwanted. Since I have a great mother-in-law, and I am a mother-in-law now, it’s easy to get defensive about these jokes and stereotypes. But it’s much more useful to wonder how they developed and what I can learn from them. Most of them probably come from the problem that authors James M. Harper and Susan Frost Olsen * call “enmeshment.” This term refers to the problem of parents and married children whose lives are so tangled together that it interferes with the new couple’s relationship. A mother who thinks it’s still her job to protect her husband, wa...

Equality is one of the founding principles of the American republic. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” (Thomas Jefferson). * We’ve struggled, with varying levels of success, to turn that ideal into reality, but no matter how far we still have to go, we believe in the promise of equality. What does “equality” look like in a marriage? Different people will answer differently, but one thing that seems certain is that if one spouse has all the power, equality isn’t truly possible. Couples may struggle to find the balance because power and responsibility go hand in hand. It’s easy to say, “I want equal power in this relationship.” But claiming power also means accepting the responsibility that goes with it. Take, for example, cooking. I do almost all the cooking and meal planning in our family. I’m good at it, and I usually enjoy it. My husband and kids are happy to let me take on this responsibility, even though they give up a lot of the ...

Let’s talk about sex. There are two extremes we can fall into in our attitude  about this subject. One is that sex is no big deal. It’s just a fun thing to do, and as long as it’s consensual and everyone uses protection, anything goes. The other end of the spectrum is believing that sex is something nasty and dirty, a necessary evil to bring children into the world, but otherwise, something to avoid or to be ashamed of. Both these extremes are wrong, and both can destroy the prospect of a fulfilling sex life. I love a story shared by Brent A. Barlow in an article for the Ensign magazine (published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). When he was a young missionary for our Church, he and his companion met with a minister from another Christian faith who asked them, “And what is the Mormon attitude towards sexuality?” Of course, the two inexperienced, never-married young men were startled and didn’t know how to reply. This wasn't a question their missiona...

In Defense of Chastity In common usage, chastity is often a synonym for virginity. However, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we use the word in a broader sense. We talk about the law of chastity when we’re referring to the guideline God has given us for sexual relationships, specifically, no sexual relations before marriage and after marriage, sexual relations only with our spouse. This concept isn’t unique to our church, however. Traditional Jewish and Muslim people, as well as Christians of most denominations, adhere (or try to adhere) to the same standard. Of course, people of other faiths or people who aren’t religious at all may wonder why such a standard is necessary. Aren’t we just being ridiculously uptight? By being so restrictive, aren’t we cutting ourselves off from a lot of pleasure and maybe even causing ourselves problems later on? In my experience, the answer is no. In this post, I’m going to rely heavily on the words of Jeffrey R. Hollan...