Cherishing Your Spouse

    This week in our home, we've all had a particularly full schedule. New activities and lessons have started, work has gotten busier, and to top it off, it's Valentine's week. My husband and I don't typically buy into the holiday that feels mostly commercialized and not completely genuine. However, this year I've felt a nudge to make it special for our family, as schedules have gotten tighter and family bonds have felt just a bit looser. Our boys are getting older, and it's sinking in that they won't be under my roof forever. 

    One might ask, what does that have to do with Marriage? Well, it came to my mind for two reasons. First, I know that when the children are grown and out of the home, I don't want to look over at my husband and realize I don't know who he is anymore. I don't want to put everything else priority above our relationship and one day realize we don't have much of a relationship to draw from. It has been sobering to think about. Second, I've been pondering how much I yearn to model the kind of marriage we want for our sons to have one day. I want them to see Nick and I sacrificing for each other, and doing so out of love and unselfish charity.  I want them to see us living the gospel in our marriage and as a family.

   In the book Drawing Heaven Into Your Marriage by H. Wallace Goddard, I was struck by his description of our first Parents, Adam and Eve, and the process by which they entered mortal life. Eve expressed gladness in Moses 5 saying, "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient."

 Interestingly, Goddard also recognizes that "Since marriage is God's finishing school, we should expect more afflictions or challenges in marriage than in any other area of life." 

   Nick and I were married almost 2 years ago, and I have been absolutely floored at the challenges that have come into our lives and the degree that we have been tried. In almost every area where growth can be projected, we discovered just how much we needed the Lord as the 3rd partner in our marriage. Multiple funerals of close family members, miscarriages, other health issues, difficulties at work, and so on just seemed to pound us one after another, after another. It's almost comical to me that I even expected anything different. This isn't my first experience in marriage, I thought I would know differently! Through all of these difficulties, Love has needed to be the motivating principle to becoming more like God, as shared by President Henry B. Eyring, 2nd counselor in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I want to be better and do better and love better. The fact of the matter is that if I am doing this to "look good" to someone else, or to be perceived as "righteous enough" it would not be as energizing, or motivating as when I am doing it to truly express and live love for my Lord and my spouse.  When these trials hit, and we want them to be our refiner's fire, "we must change because of love." (Eyring, 2009) Love is truly the greatest motivating factor.  I think of all the times that I have experienced a potential stumbling block in my life, and I continued to persevere, and things worked out. I think I can keep doing that in my marriage, one day at a time. And that realization means everything.

Eyring, H. (2009). Our Perfect Example, Ensign Oct, 2009.