An Enduring Marriage

This is the engagement photo for Dave and I.  Can you believe how young we were?  1997.  Where does the time go?

Dave and I were married in March of 1998.  We were both young and the sun shone brightly above the horizon of our lives.  There were no clouds in the sky, no shadows eclipsing our path, just our own faith illuminating our way.  We could never have guessed the intensity of the storms that would try us and prove the strength of our marriage.

It turns out that our marriage had it's share of fowl weather, but we'd managed to make the most of the sunshine, and we took advantage of the opportunity to dance in the rain.  The storms came and went, as storms often do, but on March 21, 2009, as we celebrated our 11th anniversary, a tempest began to rage with more intensity than we had ever seen before. 3 days later, Dave was taken to the other side of the veil.  He reminded me before he left that we can continue to grow together, but how?

In a 1976 address, President Spencer W. Kimball reminded each of us that "marriage can be more an exultant ecstasy than the human mind can conceive.  This is within the reach of every couple, every person."  What a tremendous blessing and an ideal to work toward.  Fortunately, it is both my blessing and my opportunity to be studying Marriage and Family at BYU-I and I am learning a great deal about the marriage relationship and it's design in God's plan.  Some factors that contribute significantly to marriage are: communication processes between couples, characteristics of the individuals, desire for self-improvement, and interaction together.  (Successful Marriages and Families, p.28)

Marriage and family specialists have outlined a number of foundational processes that contribute to a healthy marriage, and I will do my very best to outline them for you throughout the next few days.

#1: Be committed to your marriage.

It seems so simple it's almost silly, but very few people enter into marriage with true commitment in mind.  Bruce C. Hafen puts it perfectly when he states, "When troubles come to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through.  They marry to give and to grow, bound by covenants to each other to the community, and to God.  Contract companions each give 50 percent.  But covenant companions each give 100 percent.  Enough and to spare.  Each gives enough to cover any shortfall by the other."

I have a unique perspective on this, since I have had both a covenant marriage and a temporal marriage.  My temporal marriage ended in divorce.  Despite what most people believe, I did not take the second marriage lightly, but I did come to see what Elder Hafen discusses demonstrated in my own life.  We each gave something close to 50%, but nothing close to 100%.  So?  When either of us fell short, our marriage fell short and ultimately ended up failing.  Here are more specifics as to why:

1. Intentional Personal Dedication.  Are you intentional in your marriage relationship?  Do you work on improving yourself?  Prior to marriage, I found myself falling for the fallacy that happy marriages were automatic.  Disney stories are called fantasy for a reason.  Marriage takes a great deal of hard work and mutual tolerance, but the effort must be mutual.  We cannot expect for our loved ones to want to be with us forever if we cannot tolerate being with each other here and now.
2. Exclusive Cleaving and Unity.  No one should take the place of your spouse, not even your children.  Dave and I had each others backs.  We presented a united front to the children.  We were true to each other and no other individual was allowed to come between us.  President Henry B. Eyring reminds us that "At the creation of man and woman, unity for them in marriage was not given as hope; it was a command! . . . That union in love is not simply an ideal.  It is a necessity."
3. Practice Spiritual Patterns.  I cannot adequately explain the value of being spiritual together, but I know that praying together, attending church together, and living our religion together did more than anything else to unify us throughout our marriage.  We turned to God, which kept us from focusing unnecessarily upon each other's weaknesses, and allowed God to mold and shape us individually.