Don't Be Too Familiar Week 11


Quite a few years back I was invited to a Mother Daughter Young Women’s activity.  One of the games they played was to have the daughters in one room answering questions about me while I was in another room answering the same questions.  Obviously, the goal was to see if their answers would match mine.  One of the questions was “Who is your mom’s favorite actor?”  My two daughters struggled with this question and couldn’t figure out what my answer could possibly be.  The other girls had no problem coming up with answers for their mom’s as they quoted their mom’s saying things like: “so-and-so has a cute bottom,” “so-and-so has really nice abs,” “so-and-so’s eyes are to die for.”  Even many of the Young Women’s leaders were making these kinds of comments.  They all laughed at my two girls as they struggled to figure out a response to this question.  They truly could not figure out my favorite actor because I NEVER talk about some guy’s rear end, etc.  I didn’t have an answer on my side either.  My girls were really disturbed about the conversations they were hearing from the other girls and women about other men.  As I began to write this paragraph, I asked my husband who my favorite actor is and he couldn’t think of one either. 

I attended a Relief Society Activity a while back and there was similar type conversation as the women were comparing men’s derrieres.  They asked me who I thought had a nice rear end.  I had to honestly say I had no idea since I don’t look at other men’s bottoms.  That really shut them up.  My husband and I have made a pact to not be familiar with members of the opposite sex.  I call women by their first name while my husband call’s them Sister Smith or whatever her last name is.  My husband call’s men by their first name while I call them Brother Smith.  I know this may seem silly to most people, but it helps to remind us to not become buddies with someone of the other gender since we don’t call them by their common name. 

We live in a very small community and my two neighbors are both LDS.  While I was serving as the Relief Society president my next-door neighbor was Young Men’s president.  It would have been so easy to carpool to Ward Council each week.  We could save on gas money and besides we were going to the same place and had to be there at the same time.  What could be wrong with that?  No one would suspect anything.  Never once did we carpool.  Even when my car was in the shop I had my husband drive me to the meeting so he could still have his car to take the rest of the family to church.

We have always wanted to avoid the appearance of evil.  Or to ever have to worry about temptations as Satan starts with the little innocent things and then moves onto the bigger ones once we are hooked.  Goddard quotes James Marshall and then makes a comment about the quote on page 95 of his book Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage, "The grass is greener on the side of the fence you water.’ If we tend our own little patch, even with all its weeds and rocks, we will find a joy that passes understanding. If we sit on the fence and dream, we will lose even our allotted garden spot. And the devil knows that.”

It is so important to take wise precautions to safeguard our marriages.  If we don’t, who will!

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