Tarnished

I agree with Urban, Melissa's post was painful to read, I kept thinking, "If my husband did that every night soon he wouldn't have a wife to come home to." My husband has a friend currently (the friend is single, has been out of a divorce for about a year) and that friend calls me to ask if my husband can come out and play. Because the one night my husband has free is one of the few nights I get to see him, we work different shifts so I only see him on Sunday and Monday. Often I agree to my husband going out and hanging out as long as I can come along. Too many nights alone for me to let my husband leave me home alone on the one night we can actually have dates. I have no problem with my husband having friends, but when those friends get in the way of our marriage I draw the line. When it comes to friends who are single, for the most part our marriage has been pretty open to them. Almost all of our friends throughout our marriage have been single people, which has worked well for us as we do not yet have children. When our little one does come I am sure it will change things. But then again we will be moving to a new area, so we won't have friends anyway. I think it really depends on the couple and how they work with their friends. I think any couple can make it work with single friends, they just have to figure out schedules a little more than they had to before.

Ah yes, I remember walking everywhere and going to the store almost everyday. I remember hearing that Germans often brought baskets or bags with them to the store because the stores there don't provide bags for free. And there is the bottle charge, where they tell you how much the bottle costs. I am guessing you could bring the bottles somewhere to get money for them. And the food, I remember also hearing that they didn't use preservatives quite to the extent we use them in the US so your produce would go bad sooner, so instead of buying in bulk like you do in the US they went shopping everyday. I seriously miss a lot of their food. I have tried to find some of it here at specialty stores, but some of it I just can't find. It makes me sad.

So far the only country I have been in where I could observe the culture was Germany. I was there for only a month but it was a very nice experience. One thing that I learned while there is that tipping your wait staff means something completely different than it does in the US. I went out to eat with my German tutor and when the meal was over I asked her about tipping customs in Germany. She said that tipping is viewed as a come on. A small tip means, "I think you are cute", a medium tip means, "Would you be interested in a date", and a large tip could mean something like "Would you like to come home with me?" Now this could be a bunch of baloney as I only heard this from my tutor and don't know if what she told me was true. But it kept me from tipping while in Germany, which was odd for me as I usually tip pretty well in the US. I had some interesting conversations with some people as well about Nazis. Often when people hear the word Germany they think of WWII and Nazis and concentration camps. On one of our first days there our group had supper at a local restaurant, at my table was a woman who became one of my good friends while out there and the family that was hosting her. The husband was an older gentleman and we all got to talking about the Nazis and how the country views them. According to him Nazis are viewed as an embarassment, and most people tend not to talk about them. He was a child when WWII happened and when it was over many of his school teachers were men who had been officers in the Nazi party. I guess they were very careful about what they said and how they taught because they were under suspicion. He said it was very interesting. It was an interesting conversation to have, especially because my husband is a history nut and one of his favorite times in history to research is WWII and Germany's involvement in it. My husband focuses mainly on their military and the tanks and such that they used. Hearing another side of things was very interesting. Later on during my stay I got onto a bus with one of my classmates and a man began to talk to us. He spoke so fast that I couldn't keep up with what he was saying, but my friend who was much more fluent than I was had a conversation with him. I could tell he was talking about Nazis and Hitler because those words kept coming up. So after we got off the bus I asked her what he had said. Apparently he had said that all we Americans believe about Germany is that they are all abunch of Nazis and that they all love Hitler but that it just isn't true. She had tried to make him see that we liked Germany and didn't think that at all, but he kept on his tirade until we got off the bus. It really caused me to see how Germans really want their good name cleared. I loved the country while I was there and would love to go back some time. I think I left a little bit of my heart in Germany, and I think it will always be there.

Thanks, I did not see this before writing my response above. I think I covered the pre-earth covenant in my last response. So on to the rest. Why do things have to be unlocked that way? This I have no answer to, I don't really know exactly how things work once we die, I only know what I have learned in the temple and what I have learned from the spirit. I have learned that I need certain covenants to unlock certain things, I don't know what those things are, I don't know how the covenant will unlock them, but I have faith that God knows and has a purpose for it all. How promises are different than just obeying the law I covered in my previous answer as well (who knew I would answer them ahead of time! ). Here is another way of looking at covenants and commandments in the way of higher and lower laws. Say you are entering a maze, there are certain doors that you have to open to get to the goal. By doing different things you are given keys to doors. However as time goes by you have to do more and more to get the keys you need. Thus lower laws for the easy keys, and higher laws for the keys that require more. This is why to repent from breaking a commandment is realitively easy compared to repenting from breaking a covenant. Because much more is expected when it comes to covenants. It is much like the priesthood, Aaronic priesthood was only given to the Israelites because they did not prove that they could be trusted with more. Because we as a people have proven that we can be trusted with more we are given more. We are given the ability to have the higher priesthood and we are given the higher laws, we are allowed to make the higher covenants with God.

Do you remember making your pre-earthly promise? If you had not been told about it then you would not remember it at all. How can you fulfill a promise you made that you don't remember? This is what it means when the scriptures say we will not be judged on commandments or covenants that we do not know the rules of. Once we learn about that covenant then we must live by it. The covenant we made with God during our premortal life gave us the opportunity to come to earth. The covenants we make during our earthly life give us opportunities in our life after death. The commandments help us to take the path that will get us there, but the covenants are what give us those opportunities. The word of wisdom started out as just that, words of wisdom, advice, good counsel. However over time they have become commandments. A covenant is between us and God, it is different than a commandment in the way that it is a promise. Again I want to bring up trust. Take the law of driving speed. We are given speed limits as a law of the land, we can choose to keep that law or we can break it. Now if we break it then we can get in trouble with the police. Now let us say that we made a promise to a loved one that we would not drive over the speed limit. If we choose to break that law not only are we breaking the law and taking the risk of getting in trouble with the police, but we are also breaking the promise we made with our loved one, we are breaking their trust in us. When we make a covenant with God we agree to follow certain laws, but we also make a promise as well with God. So if we choose to break the covenant not only are we breaking the law (and thus reaping the consequences) but we are also breaking the promise and the trust God has placed in us. It is the fact that it is a promise, and that we are making it with God with his trust that we will keep it that makes it a higher law over just regular commandments. Please let me know that some of this is making sense and that I am not just repeating myself and rambling on and on.

As someone who majored for awhile in secondary education, I have to ask myself, "If you are going to buy expensive electronics for every child in your school, why not keep those electronics to help the following years of student? Why give a gift to only a small group of students when you can use that electronic resource as a learning tool for at least a few years? It is like buying laptops for classrooms to help with learning, and then giving them away at the end of the year as an incentive for graduating. It doesn't help you in years to come, in fact it leaves you right were you started, and for this school will take them back to buying text books after all the iPods are gone.

I thought you were a potato!

I think Havejoy is right, have the baby sealed to both parents, I think in the millenium there will be a lot of sorting things out. So we probably don't have to worry too much about the technicalities right now. As far as your mother, I don't know if I would tell her, and if she one day decides to seal that baby to herself, don't tell her she can't. Let her do it and it all can be sorted out in the millenium.

Well the promises act as keys of a sort. So when we die those keys will allow us to get to certain places, following the rules is nice and all but it gets you no keys in the end. In the temple we make covenants so that when we die we will have those keys and can pass the gates to get to where we would like to get to. At least this is how I understand it. Besides this, deciding to follow a rule is different than promising to follow a rule. If we make a promise to do something it is a stronger thing than just following a rule. I suppose in today's world keeping your word on something doesn't carry as much weight as it did in years passed, however our promise to God is important in his eyes. When God gives us rules it is fine and well, but when God makes promises with us it carries an additional level of import. It is kind of like the people of Israel in the Bible, God gave them rules but they chose not to follow those rules so he refused to give them the next level of trust. Which were covenants. This is why the people of Israel couldn't perform the same temple rites we can today, they didn't show that they were willing to obey the commandments to gain the level of trust with God where he could give them the next level of priesthood and the next level of trust. We have been given commandments in this dispensation, but we have also been given the covenants as the next level of trust. This is what being a covenant people means to me. That we are making a promise with God, basically saying, "You trust me enough to give me this covenant and so I make a promise to keep this covenant with you." Like I mentioned before, it is a sort of contract we make with God. See it as lesser laws and higher laws if needed. The commandments (like the 10 commandments) are lesser laws, and the covenants are higher laws. What they mean is that God is trusting us with more.

The movie was sort of trippy. I watched it during my adult years and thought that it was an odd movie.

A covenant is a promise between you and God, it is different than a commandment in that way. A commandment is a law or rule we have been given and if we follow the commandments then yes we are blessed. A covenant is a sort of contract that we have between God, we promise to do certain things and God promises to do certain things. This gives us blessings and allows us to reach certain realms after death. For example, the covenant we make when we are sealed allows us to reach parts of the Celestial Kingdom. So I suppose commandments allow us to have blessings in this life and help us to keep on the right path to make our way back to God after death, Covenants are promises we make with God that will give us blessings in this life and after death. So if you want to get down to brass tacks, Commandments are rules, Covenants are promises. Edit: Also, because covenants are promises you make, breaking one brings with it more severe consequences than if you don't follow a commandment.

I read Fahrenheit 451 as a teen and loved it. I am a book lover myself and so the book was a strange and horrific future for someone like me. Thinking about it now as an adult I can see where Bradbury was making a specific comentary on society and in particular governments. There are a few furturistic movies and books that it reminds me of. "A Brave New World" is a book I have on my "to read" list. I should re-read Fahrenheit 451 though. I am sure I have forgotten things about it since I was a teen.

Exactly, basically saying that the text I quoted was exactly what I had been thinking.

This. A lot of the stuff you bring up are things that anti-Mormons bring up when they come to this forum, which is why HiJolly understandably thought you were a troll. You have to be getting all these anti-Mormon stuff from somewhere. Truthfully that stuff isn't the best to be reading. It is strange but I have noticed among my ex-LDS friends that they forget things about the church very quickly. It doesn't take them too long before they start spouting things like, "One of the temple ceremonies is a huge orgy!" or other such nonsense. And the crazy thing is, they know better. They grew up with it, they knew the truth at one point and somehow they have talked themselves into forgetting a good part of it. Do you really want to be basing your beliefs on people who probably left the church because they got their feelings hurt, or some other trite reason and now have an axe to grind? Yea, I am sure some of their arguments makes sense, guess who they have on their side? The great imitator, the great deceiver, Satan. And he can help people write a pretty convincing argument. Not all Patriarchal Blessings say the same thing, not all of them promise the same stuff. And most of the blessing is based on what you choose to do with your life. Regarding the temple, you really don't understand the ceremonies there until you are there and go through on your own. Looking at it as a teen who probably has not delved extremely deeply into scriptural symbolism it wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't have made sense to me when I was your age. But now it is a very wonderful experience and it makes perfect sense. And the God and Mary thing, do you think he really had sex with her? Really? She was called a virgin for a reason. Basing the church's standards on morality on the theory that God and Mary had sex is really stretching it. Do you know for certain that is what happened? No, you can't, no one can, and that is the crux of it. You are basing your beliefs on suppositions, not on truths. As far as being mature for your age, I was mature for my age but I still waited. The fact of the matter is, hormones don't care about maturity. Hormones don't care about age or how much maturity you may have, all hormones care about it getting you to do what you suddenly think you want to do. The truth is, people who date younger have a tendency to have sex younger. Hormones are strong things, and sometimes cause people with the most self control to bend like a piece of grass. It is best to not put yourself in a situation where you may not be able to control yourself. Trust me here, I speak from experience, hormones and emotions never took me anywhere safe if I let them lead. I think you should start reading some LDS stuff on the things you are curious about and stop visiting the Anti sites. They aren't going to help you at all.

Looks like some sort of constrictor snake. I am only familar with boa constrictors and rainbow boas.

There is Social Anxiety, which is a different thing than introversion. It is true that many introverts have social anxiety but not everyone who has social anxiety is an introvert, and not all introverts have social anxiety. I am assuming that when we are talking about shy people we are talking about introverts.

I did not know that. Good to know. Not that I would want implants, I would actually prefer to go a cup smaller than a cup larger.

I see breast implants about the same way I see any body modification, as pretty much a waste of money, and something that is going to be a bit awkward as you get older. Breast implants come with their own problems and when not properly done have been known to kill the woman. Also if you have not yet had children once you have breast implants you can no longer breastfeed. There goes a ton of money you could have saved. Then as you get older and every other part of you gets saggy you still have that perky pair that just doesn't look natural on you. Awkward. All around it just seems weird and odd to me, but then again I don't really get the appeal of body modification. Much the same way I don't get the attraction of drug usage.

Amen to that Sister! As a couple that has seriously had to take a look at adopting we were seriously surprised at the costs of adopting. And then you hear about mothers who are aborting their children and you think, "I would have taken that child." I think the whole mindset of adoption needs to change, and there needs to be some leeway given to people who want to adopt, I can understand the viewpoint of it being there to ensure the safety of the child, but when it comes down to something stupid like stairs, then I just don't get it.

If they don't have enough money for the adoption chances are they aren't going the way of IVF. If it is a couple then AI may be the way they go unless dealing with a fertility problem on one side or the other resulting in sterility or severe lack of eggs or sperm. Problems with restrictions can possibly be gotten around by going with a foreign adoption. I haven't looked deeply into how different nations go about adopting out children from their country but I do know that some view it as a business deal, you give them money they give you a child. I view it as a commandment based on as you say disciplinary action if the action is taken. And like I said in my previous post I think it is a commandment due to the sexual and procreative nature of the action. True you are not having sex with the other person, but you are using their sexual material to create a life, the "usual" result of sex (I say usual because sometimes it does not work that way for everyone). Because of this I think a single individual should probably go with adoption if they plan to follow the commandments.

Yes. As much as I love my dogs and as good as they have been with my nieces and other babies that have been around them I still have decided that I never want to leave them alone with the baby. If I put the baby down for a nap I will probably close the door to its room and use baby monitors. I don't want something to happen that would not be good. I do plan to do different things to get them prepared for the baby, and I think the interaction they have had with my nieces has been good for them, it gets them used to the idea of having a baby around and how they are to act around a baby. Still my current baby niece is going away next week and they will have about 6 months to forget her before our little one comes. Which is why I am seriously thinking about using a babydoll and the baby carrier and possibly some other baby things to get the dogs used to the idea of having certain items around and how they should act when those items are around.

I agree with this. When it comes to being introverted or extroverted it all comes down to recharging styles. Extroverts are recharged by being around people, while introverts are recharged by being alone. Being around a lot of people can be literally draining for introverts. And the church is very focused on extroversion, so it can be difficult for introverts to function "appropriately" in church as they are often not comfortable doing extroverted things. And it takes time for an introvert to get to a point where they feel comfortable. I think seat saving can get over the top. And I think we do need to be more open to people who come and want to sit when we are saving a seat. There have been times where I have saved seats, but usually it is because my family member had to get up (often to take care of a child) and will be coming back once they are done. However, I do agree that taking offense from being told not to sit down is a bit over the top, if it had been me, considering that I am also a very shy person, I would probably have gone and sat in the foyer for sacrament meeting. And would have gone home afterward. I don't much like conflicts with people and that would have probably been enough for me to not want to run into the person later that day.

Yes, this helps a lot! We will probably look at getting a crib because we do have dogs and they do like to sleep on pretty much anything. I figure the only place the baby will be safe from the dogs possibly laying on it will be in a crib. My brother and sister in law have been living with my parents over the summer while they wait to see which law school my brother will be going to. They just had a baby in April so when we visit I have been watching to see how our dogs interact with the baby. Often my bro and sis-in-law have put the baby down on a bed my parents have set up in the living room (they have had a lot of company this summer and just figured it is easier right now to keep it there until all the guests are gone) and we have had to watch the dogs and keep them from jumping up on the bed while the baby is there. My sis in law mentioned that we will probably end up just letting the baby sleep with us, like they did, but with our dogs I just don't feel comfortable with that option. Even having the baby on a matress on the floor would probably not work, because our dogs are used to having dog pillows strewn around the bedroom that they can just plop down on. I would hate to have them plop down on the baby in the middle of the night. And training really isn't an option for the dogs. Our female has been very resistant to certain things we have tried to train her on and staying off the bed when we tell her to get off is one of those things. She is like the camel in the story of the sandstorm and the camel. She sneaks one bit of herself on the bed until she is completely there pushing you into unnatural shapes. (for those unfamiliar with the story: A man was traveling in the desert with his camel and sees a sandstorm coming so he sets up his tent to shelter him through the sandstorm. The storm starts and the camel says to him, "Master, the sand is hurting me so, can I come into the tent to shelter from the storm?" And the man says, "But if I let you in the tent there will be no room for me and I will die in the storm." So the camel says, "Well at least let me put in just my nose." So the man agrees, the camel repeats with with his eyes, then his ears then his whole head and so on until the camel has put his entire body in the tent and has pushed the man out where the man ends up dying in the storm.) This is all very good advice though, so thank you for it all. And when it comes to all the extras my parents have been slowly but surely filling their home with little fun baby toys and exersaucers, and mobiles, and baby play areas, so that when their grandbabies come by they can play with the toys. And as we will be moving to a place about 5 minutes from them I figure we can always go over there if we feel like the baby needs to play on something like that.

Having looked into both adoption and artificial insemination and for that matter IVF (In Vetro Fertilization) and the church's veiws on the matter here is my opinion. I think the reason for the way the church handbook is written is more of a morality standpoint. For example in my case. My husband was sterilized by chemotherapy, thankfully he stored semen before the treatment. However if he had not we would not be able to use donor sperm to get pregnant. That tells me that the reason behind the rule is that using donor sperm is viewed as getting pregnant by a man other than my husband. I also would not be able to get pregnant with an embryo that had been created by using another woman's egg and my husband's sperm. So in a single woman I believe the rule is based on the fact that though it is a medical proceedure you are in effect getting pregnant from a man you are not married to. The church does not dicipline people for not having both spouses (thus I don't see it as a "there is not a husband in the picture" thing) but they do dicipline for sexual transgressions, which I believe is what they view the act as. From what I have read on the matter the church would be fine with adoption. But as you say, adoption brings its own difficulties. In our case we looked at all options. Adoption costs as much as IVF, which can be around $10,000 or more. Artificial Insemmination is cheaper, but for us it used too many vials of sperm to be a good option. We ended up going with IVF because we wanted to try to have a child of our own before we tried adoption. Maybe it was vain of us, maybe even selfish, but it was our decision and our choice. I can understand where the thought process comes from. It is a difficult situation you find yourself in. Adoption does cost a lot, and you have to have your home and your life approved by the adoption agency. Fertility treatments, AI or IVF are also both costly, and as a single woman they carry the consequences of church disciplinary action. My advice would be adoption, there are some companies out there who will help pay or reimburse adoption costs. And sometimes foreign adoption is easier than adopting from someone in the States. Or wait till you get married and have children then. From what I have read there is a process where you can freeze your eggs and save them for later use if you are worried about not getting married until it is too late. That might also be an option to look into. Anyway these are just my thoughts based on what I have read and looked into. Hope they help.

We went to a thrift store over the weekend and I found a stoller and a baby swing. They went into our storage. However I am thinking of getting a doll and getting the baby carrier that came with the stroller out of storage and using them around my dogs so that they get used to having the baby carrier around and used to not being jumpy around it.