Understanding doctrine

1 November 2013, 1:22 pm by Giggles
Categories: Books, Gospel

Earlier this year I read Increase in Learning by Elder David A. Bednar (my review). In one section he talks about the difference between doctrine, principle, and application. As I read the book I was struck at how often those three terms are interchanged and confused and yet how different they all are. I must admit that even I’ve mistaken principles for doctrine at times.

Elder Bednar defines doctrine as an eternal truth. Doctrine answers “why?” A principle answers the “what?” questions and is a doctrinally based guideline for life. They provide directions. Both doctrine and principles are unchanging. From a single doctrine you can have multiple principles. When you really get right down to it there aren’t that many doctrines either.

That leaves applications, the “how?” of the Gospel. Behaviors, steps, practices, procedures, those can, and do, change as individual needs and circumstances arise. Multiple applications can be associated with a single principle.

I have thought a lot about those definitions over the past several months. I realized that a lot of the time we are talking about applications. Teaching applications will not change behavior in the long run. It will not change a person’s heart. But a true understanding of doctrine allows everything else to naturally fall into place. Truly understanding the doctrine of the family makes the application of the law of chastity a simple matter.

I’ve heard in the news of groups asking for a “change of doctrine” with regards to the priesthood lately. They cite previous “changes” to the doctrine. But doctrines do not change. There have been changes in the application throughout history. But the doctrine of the power of God has not changed. Nor have the principles associated with it. Hanging on to applications as if they were doctrine is a very shaky foundation, one that’s sure to fall.

So I have sought to truly understand the doctrine. Because if I have that then I will know exactly how it is to be applied in my individual circumstances. I’ve sought to teach doctrine when I’m teaching classes at church. I want to base my learning, study, and life in the doctrine, the eternal, unshakable, sure foundation that will make everything else make sense.

It’s a different way to talk about things, and I’m still working on grasping the definitions. But I think it’s definitely worth it for me. Elder Bednar’s second book is called “Act in Doctrine,” which is helping me even further with this idea.

I love books that can motivate me to change internally like that.

2 Shared thoughts

Full Time

25 October 2013, 10:57 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Work

A full-time job is something you do 40 hours out of the week. There are 168 hours in a week, so a full-time job is less than a fourth of the week. A full-time job is something you get paid for. A full-time job is something you can lose if the economy gets bad. It is something you can retire from. It is something you can change at a mid-life crisis. It is something you get sick days, paid time off, and vacations from.

Parenting is not a full-time job.

No matter what else you do during the week, you are a parent all 168 hours of the week. There is no monetary compensation for parenting. No matter the economy you are always a parent. You never retire from parenting. And you can’t decide half-way through to change your mind. There are no sick days, no vacations, no leaving it at the office. Iddo004And while I’ve never found a job I can literally do in my sleep, you are a parent even while dreaming.

If you have children, you are a parent. There’s no part-time or full-time about it. Brett is just as much a full-time parent as I am even though he spends 40 hours a week in an office. He takes his fatherhood to the office with him. Moms who work and moms who don’t are all full-time moms.

Parenting, being a mom or a dad, is not a job. It is not a career choice. It is life. And it’s worth it.

3 Shared thoughts

You are probably a feminist (and that isn’t a bad thing)

24 October 2013, 7:02 am by Giggles
Categories: Musings

When I woke up yesterday morning to feed Iddo her first breakfast my site already had 50 visits for the day. Yesterday a piece I wrote about feminism was published on A Practical Wedding – The Story of a Square-Pegged Feminist.

I have long identified as a feminist, and I’ve long been told that I’m not one, which really annoys me. There are too many people who only see the extreme stereotypes for women. You are either bare-foot, pregnant, in the kitchen and completely submissive or you are a bra-burning man hater. The reality of life is that neither of those stereotypical extremes actually fully exists. Stereotypical extremes of all kinds hurt everyone.

Life is a messy spectrum and I have no internal conflict being a bare-foot feminist with a baby and a PhD, whipping up dinner in the kitchen for my husband while quilt blocks cover the kitchen table. (See “I’m a S.W.A.M.“) I’m a feminist because I want equity for all of humanity, men and women.

I am a woman. That makes me different than men in innumerable ways. It does not make me worse than men. It does not make me better. I have value as a human. I do not need to be a man, or even be like men, to have value.

4 Shared thoughts

Defense of Marriage Acts

23 October 2013, 6:46 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Relationships

Last month I read an interesting opinion piece in the Deseret News – We all should obey a new DOMA. In response to the Supreme Court overthrowing the Defense of Marriage Act, the author suggested we as individuals could unofficially pass our own defense of marriage acts. He gave a list of things individuals and families can do to defend marriage and the family, the core foundation of any society.

In our own home we do several acts to defend our marriage.

We defend each other fiercely. We are jokingly counting down to our fifth anniversary next year. Upon finding out we were getting married someone we know said she gave my husband five years before he’d figure out how mean I am and divorce me. My then fiancé’s response was to tell her if she couldn’t speak nice of me then he was done speaking to her.

We express gratitude to each other regularly. We believe part of our continued expressions of gratitude for the little things is that we were single for so long and had to do all the things, large and small, alone. It’s so wonderful to be able to share all the things now, both large and small.

We talk, a lot. Since we met online our relationship has been built on communication from the start. We still talk through everything, some of it even by email. We take a walk every Monday night around the neighborhood and touch base with each other about whatever we need to. Those walks were life savers during our infertility treatments as we figured out how we each felt and where we were going next.

We laugh, a lot. Oh the jokes we have. Most of them highly nerdy. And it is always a case of laughing with each other, not at each other.

We cleave. We left father and mother and cleave to each other as husband and wife. We love our respective families. We get along great with them. Calling them “in-laws” seems a bit weird because they’re just that much our family. But we are our own unit.

We are husband and wife first. This has been a bit tricky since the arrival of the baby, but I am my husband’s wife before I am my daughter’s mother. We’re already letting her know that she needs to see us kiss and give us time to be together so that we can maintain a stable home for her.

We keep the name of the other safe. You will never hear me bash my husband in public. You will never hear me talk about his faults. You will never hear me debase him. I will not take it to the internet to see what random strangers have to say about how annoyed I should be at him. I will not gossip about him. If there is a problem between us, it is between us.

We hold hands. It’s a bit harder now since we also have to hold on to our baby. But we still hold hands when we walk or are driving in the car. He still puts his arm around me at church.

We let each other be who they are as an individual. We support each other in our interests. I buy books on ancient Greek and Hebrew for him. He works chains at football games with me. He was the first person to read my dissertation cover-to-cover. I quiz him on his vocabulary and get excited about his database. I married him for who he is, not who I thought I could make him become.

We say “I love you.” We say it a lot. And we mean it.

What acts do you do to defend marriage and the family?

Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.
– The Family: A Proclamation to the World

4 Shared thoughts

Ten Years

21 October 2013, 7:29 am by Giggles
Categories: Happy Things, Science & Tech

I remember when ten years seemed like a long time, especially because they had a name for that length of time. It was a whole decade!

Ten years ago I’d lived a quarter of a century. Ten years ago I was starting my second year as a computer teacher. Ten years ago yesterday I started a website called Miss Giggles.

In the past ten years I started and finished two graduate degrees. I went on some great road trips, including Mt. Rushmore, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon. I dabbled in community theater and learned to belly dance. I moved states. I ran two marathons. I did a lot of physical therapy. I got married. I had two surgeries and two miscarriages. I crossed “work chains at a football game” off my life list (and hope to be back at it next year). I had a baby.

And you can find evidence of all that and more on this site. I’ve been a big journal keeper since I was 11. I love the role this website plays for me in that. I’ve truly enjoyed documenting part of my life and my thoughts here to share with whoever wants to see (especially my mom, who checks multiple times a day).

I’m excited to see what I’ll be looking back on ten years from now. Let’s make it epic!

4 Shared thoughts

Light and Hope

15 October 2013, 3:55 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Health, Infertility

I met our infertility doctor on February 1, 2011. Just making that appointment was emotionally hard on me, let alone going to it. It meant admitting there was a problem, that things weren’t working the way we thought they should, that I might be “broken.”

Two years, five months, and two days later, on July 3, 2013, our infertility doctor met our daughter.

In between those days we lived a lifetime of ups and downs.

This month is International pregnancy and infant loss month, with today being the day of remembrance for those little ones.

Today I remember our son.

He was perfect. But I developed a bleed in my uterus and it got too big for him. He forever changed my heart and soul. I felt a morbid sense of relief when we passed 20 weeks with our daughter because it meant I could not medically have a miscarriage any more. At that point it would be classified a still birth. Because of him I would treasure every pregnant moment I ever had again. He is in the back of my mind to help me treasure every moment I have with his sister now.

While I will never wrap him in a quilt in this life, because of his short life we were able to keep pushing forward until we had a child I could wrap in a quilt. He gave us hope.

Tonight I will light a candle for him, and all the others who left too soon, as part of a wave of light across the globe.

4 Shared thoughts

How I met our daughter (the first time)

8 October 2013, 11:54 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Happy Things, Infertility

The doctor appointment was at 9am one year ago today. I dressed with care, knowing it was silly to think of this as the first impression I’d make on our potential child, but still wanting to dress special for the possible special occasion this would be. Brett took the morning off work because intellectually and emotionally it was important for us to have him there even if physically he didn’t need to be.

They called us back to a room with a TV and then went to get things set up. There on the screen the doctor showed us what they were looking at with the microscope and we talked odds. There were five beautiful looking morulas on the screen. Because of my history we’d be transferring four of them and freezing the rest (eight frozen total).

We went into the procedure room and everyone got everything set up. They gave us a photo of the image we’d seen on the screen. Then they brought in the embryos and put them in me.

We joked about them having Brett’s hair and nose. We made jokes about the process. Then we went out to lunch and dared to hope.

This is what our daughter looked like a year ago today.

Today she’s a beautiful girl who will be 4 months old next week. She has soft curls from her dad and really does have his nose. And she smiles big enough for the whole world.

The first time I saw her will always stand out in my memory.

5 Shared thoughts