(Creating a Righteous Family}

Each week I attend two lectures for my family relations class. Along with that I have about 2-4 hours of homework a week associated with the class, including a blog entry. I usually do the post Saturday night, not because I procrastinate, (okay maybe I do a little) but because it takes awhile for my thoughts to be organized and focused on what to write about. This week it was especially hard to narrow down what I wanted to blog about. We talked a lot about culture and traditions. My professor posed two questions: How does culture effect family? How does family effect culture? With those questions in mind we read a journal article about the effects of immigration on illegal hispanic families (I loved this because it was from a family systems perspective rather than recent political perspectives), as well as researching several different videos, and talks related to culture. There was so much to learn and ponder on! Throughout the week I had several different ideas come to mind for a blog post. On Thursday my professor ended with saying that he hoped one of the outcomes we'd take from what we've been learning is to make choices regarding the family with clear intentions. I found that really interesting and intriguing. I looked up the word intention and it means an aim or plan. In other words my professor wants us to take what we've learned and apply it to our own family choices and create a healthy family.

We all come from a family of origin, yet we each produce a family of creation. I love that! We all grow up in families, yet we all have different experiences, traditions, and cultural backgrounds. We take all of this with us, along with the love of our life (who also has their own set of experiences, traditions, and cultural background) and create a family all our own. Isn't that beautiful!

My whole life I've been praying, and pondering my future family of creation. Wondering who the man will be that I create this family with, as well as the children we create. Where will we live? What will our family culture be like? How will my husband support us? How will we raise are kids? What will we believe in? All of these questions will be created. My professor helped me understand this week that I want to create all of these things with intention. Meaning that I don't want them to just happen, but rather I want to aim and plan for them. I know I can't plan for everything, sometimes things just happen; however, I want to aim for a successful, forever family. I feel that the culture I live in will not be near as important as the family culture my husband and I will create. I want our family culture to be one that lets our children know that they are loved beyond the sands of the sea, that we believe in them, and that God believes in them.

I know to create my family culture with intention I have to be preparing now. It can't start once I'm married, or have kids, but it has to start now. I'm a big fan of habits. If I'm not living the type of life now that I want for my family of creation, then I have things to fix. Needless to say if the habit isn't established now, it sure wont be in the future. In conclusion I want to share this talk. I love this talk! It has helped prepare me to create my future family culture with pure and righteous intention.