Future Family and Cultures

     I love my family. This includes everyone my immediate family, my extended family. They are all so important to me. Growing up, I was always surrounded by family. I would have family dinners with the cousins. I would stay with my grandparents every summer for at least one month. So I grew very close to my family. When I was in 5th grade my parents go a divorce, so this perfect image of a mom and dad family was gone. This took me a really long time to overcome. To be okay with the fact that my family was going to be different from the rest of everyone else. I hated this when I was younger, especially in middle school. My family and I stuck out like a sore thumb. We would go to church and there would only be three of us. This was hard for me because I hated everyone staring at me. But I learned that different was okay. There was nothing wrong with my family, we just had a unique situation. 

     This certain situation in my life has brought me to ponder a lot about my future and my future family. Something exciting happened last week actually, I got engaged to my best friend. He is the best person and the best person for me. Here is a picture to show you how perfect that day was for us.

  So, this weeks lesson in class was perfect, it made me think about what I want to bring in my future family. I loved how I was raised, and I loved how my fiance was raised, but we were raised very differently. We come from very different family backgrounds, but that makes me excited. We both were raised so different yet either of the ways were wrong. My fiance has a very strong parent base, both of them have the strongest testimony and with me my dad is against the church and has battled with a lot of struggles, but my this has taught me what not to do. His not so good example showed me what I do not want in a husband, and showed me what I want and what I need to have a healthy relationship. 

   My fiance and I had a long talk about what we wanted to bring to the table when we get married and start to build our own family. We both said the same things and that was so cool to me. The reason being is because we come from different cultures. He is from California and I'm from Arizona and let alone those states are very different. So I was expecting different views on things because we were raised in different settings. But the big thing that we both said was, that we want our children to know that the Gospel is very important and is the center stone of our relationship. This alone has some much it brings to the table. I was not raised in the church because my family and I were very in active, yet 10 years later and my number one goal in a marriage and future family is the Gospel. 

    I love this stage of my life and I loved the lesson we had because I have been dreaming of this my whole life and it is right in front of me. Taking two different cultures coming together and and creating a beautiful like together. I know that its not going to be easy because taking to people that were raised different and bringing them together to build a family is going to be hard. Everyone has own views and own opinions but I know that if we both keep the same center stone, which is the gospel, things will work out just fine. 

    One thing that my family does that I want to bring to my soon to be family is family game nights. This is a time where we can all bond together and laugh together. I think that laughing is the best thing for the soul and laughing together with your family makes it even better. This is where inside jokes are made and those are the best part. Also a little friendly competition never hurt anyone. 

  I hope everyone is having a good week and surviving this quarantine time!

  See you guys next week !