Stake Women's Conference

This Morning we had Stake Women's Conference. Though I woke up at 6am thanks to the howling wind, my bed was too warm and comfy to get up and leave it in order to be at the meeting by 8:30. It was at the Stake Center (Church) about 30 minutes away from where I live. So by the time I got there I had missed the breakfast, but I was fine with that. I had already eaten a half bowl of oatmeal and the stuff they had (a bunch of egg casseroles) looked good but fattening, so I was glad I had already eaten!

I will just say that I wasn't really looking forward to going either. Spending time on my Saturday when Laren's home at the Church sitting in a long meeting didn't seem appealing today, but I went anyway. It actually turned out to be a fantastic meeting!

The main speaker was a Stake President from the Arvada Stake, his stake neighbors ours. He seemed like just another aging man at the onset, but the more I listened the more I began to really be interested in what he was saying. His topic: Marriage. That seems to be the running theme in our ward and stake lately.

He spoke about the needs of Husbands. He said every husband needs these 3 things regularly: Understanding, Acceptance and Affection/Intimacy. He talked about a time in his life when he lost his business. He is an accountant and it was some savings and loan company. It happened 18 years ago. He was devasted! He had been the CFO and Vice President of this company and it went bankrupt due to someone embezzling money. He was not a part of it, but he got the majority of the blame.

He said at the time, his picture was in almost every major newspaper across the country. He had to go and testify before Congress, and it was not a happy thing, they really needled him. Even though he knew he had done nothing wrong, he felt devasted and depressed. He said it was the worst time of his life! He could hardly function. He lost his short term memory. He was visiting his brother in Utah and noticed his dog and asked him if he got a new dog, he said, "No, you played with that dog for half a day the last time you were here a few months ago."

He remembers having a business trip to go on and he wasn't so sure that that particular trip might have been his breaking point. As it turned out, his wife wasn't so sure either and so she had put a nice card for him in his shaving case. She put some other great notes in various pockets of his clothing where she knew he would find them.

He actually said he pulled them out of his shaving bag this past week in preparation for the talk. It was the first time he took them out other than just to look at them in 18 years. He read them to us, one said, "I just want you to know how much I love you." Another said, "I believe in you and you are going to make it out of this situation just fine." I can't remember the other ones, but they were equally as loving and comforting.

He said those notes and his good, supportive wife made ALL the difference to him and helping him to get out of his funk. There were 3 other guys who were in the hotseat from the failure of this savings and loan. One of them, his wife told him to just say he did it (even though he didn't) and serve your prison time because I'm sick of this. And so he did and lost his freedom.

Another one of the guys wives blamed him for all the trouble, financial and otherwise in their life. She didn't divorce him but apparently they lost their kids, I'm guessing the kids went astray. The third guy, his wife turned into an alcoholic. She would go and buy a 1/5 of gin to drink everyday after she got the kids off to school. They would come home to find her passed out. One day they came home and found her dead.

She had apparently passed out in such a way that she got a kink in her neck and it suffocated her and her children found her in their home, dead. The speaker, President Lewis, said his wife was the one that saved him from the other scenarios by being so positive and supportive and loving towards him, even though they were in financial ruin and they were living on IRA's and were being sued for $200 MILLION dollars!

Anyway, he was sharing with us this scenario from his own life to illustrate what a difference the wife makes in a marriage and in her husbands life. It can either be a great influence for the better, or a bad influence for the worse. Eventually, they were able to work their way out of their problems in the situation and turned out very successful at another job.

He talked about Satan attacking the family. He said he attacks men through pornography and other women. He said that in turn denigrates women and it ruins the family. He said Satan works on women by "role confusion." As a result women end up taking big careers and getting caught up in them, not getting married or having children. This, he said, denigrates men and upsets family life. They are 2 completely different ways but they both are effective in destroying families.

He talked about the vicious cycle of a woman getting hurt, then blaming her husband then withholding love and affection from him and then the relationship starting to fail which causes more blame and the cycle continues.

He really emphasized how important husbands need affection. He said it is very important to them just as we wives need our husbands to talk to and for them to listen, they need us to show our physical affection for them. He quoted some scriptures one from Corinthians and one from Genisis about this. He said it is the way God intended it to be.

Anyway, it was a really great talk! I needed to hear it because I am guilty of not always showing my husband the affection that he needs. It's nice to know from a man's perspective what they really need. It seems as though most talks focus on the men just staying away from pornography and showing love for their wife and none else. So it was nice to learn what more we women can do to help our husbands out to be happier and more successful.