A Brigham Young University Student Journal
The excitement is building; I am officially counting down the days now. In a little over two weeks my fiancée and I are getting married in the Salt Lake Temple! He feels like it’s not coming soon enough, I feel like the time is whizzing …
By Jerrick Robbins My sister recently bought a new cell phone. It has all the speed, all the data, and all the memory a person could want. Her brand-new technology puts my one-year-old technology to shame. In fact, it might as well own my phone. …
By Jerrick Robbins
When I lived at home, my dad often enlisted my help on certain household projects. My mom called it his “Honey do“ list, although it wasn’t really a list. She would simply call out, “Honey, do this” or “Honey, do that.” My dad would echo Wesley from The Princess Bride and say, “As you wish” to his Princess Buttercup. He was her farm boy and her worker bee.
I’m slightly terrified of bees, but I’ve also come to respect those little black and yellow creatures. I learned that bees converse through a sort of dance. They zig and zag communicating to the other hive members the location of a particular flower-filled meadow. On average, a hive of bees will fly over 48,000 miles to accumulate enough pollen for just one quart of honey. That’s a lot of work!
Looking back at those Saturdays spent working on the list with my dad, I remember the feeling of accomplishment I had when we would finish a project. I imagine that honeybees don’t have that same feeling at the end but during the journey. For them, collecting honey is a continuous process. Collecting honey never stops.
Those days of helping my dad on his “Honey do” list are past, but I’m getting closer to having my own Princess give me “Honey do” lists someday. I’ve decided there’s a reason why so many couples call each other “honey.” Now maybe it’s because many people think it’s cute, but I believe there’s a deeper reason. Think of all the time and hard work a hive of bees accomplishes just for one quart of honey. Now think of all the time and hard work required to nurture a relationship. There’s a correlation there, and it’s not coincidental.
by Alissa Holm The experience of marrying another person is likely the biggest transition a person will ever make in their life. Each person goes into a marriage with their own set of values, beliefs, traditions, experiences, and testimony, and is expected to join with …
by Erin Jones Provo, Utah, is known for its obsession about dating matters, and for good reason. When you stick a group of thousands of Latter-day Saint (Mormon) young adults together who are all trying to get married, you can expect to hear about dating. …
by Christy Hinkson 
Christy is an author and a mother of ten. She recently released her new book Home Remedies for a Nation at Risk: What American Leaders could learn from American Families. Also, click here to view Christy’s blog Stand for the Truth.
With the contraception debate brewing and boiling over, I have to ask: What about Abstinence? Why does anyone have to pay for birth control at all? Why do people laugh and think it is impossible to keep sexual relations within the bonds of marriage. What about all the people in the world who manage to control themselves and refrain from sex until they are married. There are millions of people all over the world who do this and have lived to tell about it. I also believe that those who abstain before marriage are in a better position to speak about “women’s health” than those who are having sex with multiple partners and using birth control, which has historically caused several women’s health issues.
I practiced abstinence and so did my husband. Our children and their spouses have also abstained until they married. I attended a prestigious private University where people were expected to live by an honor code and if they had sex outside of marriage while they were students they faced being dismissed as students from the university. What a great opportunity to go to school where the focus was actually on academics.
Choosing to be “morally clean” was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. Here are some of the stresses in life that I now do not have to worry about now because I was not prematurely sexually active:
1. I don’t have to worry that I will get a sexually transmitted disease.
2. I don’t have to worry that I will be as tempted to succumb to breaking this law as an adult. If I can survive the raging hormone time of youth, I am well on my way to living a pure life.
3. I don’t have to worry that I will have an unwanted pregnancy outside the bonds of marriage.
4. I don’t have to worry that anyone will ask me to consider having an abortion or giving a child up for adoption.
5. I don’t have to worry that there will be a child somewhere that I gave birth to and have not been able to raise.
6. I don’t have to worry that I have near as high of a chance of developing cervical cancer that is significantly linked to having multiple sex partners.
7. I don’t have to worry that my husband married me because he “had to.”
8. I don’t have to worry that I will run into old partners and be embarrassed.
9. I don’t have to worry that I will ever think about other partners that I was immoral with.
10. I don’t have to worry that God will be disappointed with my choices.
Practicing abstinence is not only free, but it is freeing. It may cause some people a little stress to practice abstinence but look at all the stress you are able to live without later.