Dear Future Family,

            05/27/17 Dear Future Family,             I am one of those girls who, since I was little, wondered who I would marry some day. Who was the prince that all of the princesses find at some point in their story? I was spoiled and picky in the sense that I had my dad to look up to as the male role model in my life. My dad is my hero, so when I got older and started dating, I compared every guy to my dad. I had set certain standards for myself, which made it very difficult to be impressed by most guys that I knew growing up. That isn’t to say that I didn’t think they were good enough, because I had mostly guy friends growing up, whom I admired greatly, but they were not what I was looking for in a future spouse. When I graduated from high school up until my mission I was in a couple of serious relationships that taught me a lot more about myself and what I wanted. When I went on a church miss...

Dear Future Family,             This week I want to talk about a subject that is very sensitive and controversial. It is something that is very personal to me and that I have thought a great deal about my entire life. This subject is that of same-sex attraction. Growing up in my hometown, I had many friends and some family that identified themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. This is something that I did not support and that did not match my values or beliefs, however, those who did choose to identify themselves in that way were still my friends and family. It did not change the way that I viewed them as people. I still loved them very much and cared about my relationship with them. I still do. I want to focus today on another question that was brought up in my Family Relations class this week. That question is: “How might we best understand and support those who struggle with same-gender attraction?”  ...

04/29/17 Dear Future Family,           In a world full of conflict and controversy, it is nice to have some direction that can clear up some misconceptions that society would have us take in as truth. I would like to focus on one particular argument that has been around for years and I imagine will only become more popular as time goes on. This is a topic that is very close to me and that I take very seriously, but I understand that my views on it may not be parallel to what some may feel to be correct. Because of this, I will do my best to be sensitive and respectful of those who may feel differently.           I love this quote from President Brigham Young. He said, “There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles, now what is our duty?—To prepare tabernacles for them; to take a course that will not tend to drive those spirits into the families of the wicked,...

Dear Future Family, Every family is different. We all come from different cultures and backgrounds, which makes each family unique. As children grow up and start to have their own families, they often begin to follow similar patterns that their parents set. Sometimes, if a child is conscious of some of these patterns early on, they don’t want to continue them in their own families, so they will try to change them. In the end, every family is a system. Everyone in the system affects one another, whether they realize it or not. Some of the ripple effects that are caused in the system are good and some are not so good. It is important to recognize what kind of system you want your family to be, so that you can prepare early on to create it by either keeping things that have formed positive experiences in your own life, adding things that you liked from other people’s families or perhaps eliminating things that you did not find as effective in your own family. Some things that I rea...