Thursday, February 26, 2015

Happy Wife, Happy Life

That's what my husband likes to say, "Happy Wife, Happy Life".

Today we celebrate our 30-something wedding anniversary.  There have certainly been times when we have struggled and no doubt annoyed each other.  I know when we work hard at making the other person happy and comfortable and think less of ourselves and our own wants, we get along wonderfully.  Funny how that works?

I have been learning a lot this semester about covenant marriages.  That is the kind of marriage that I have.  Bruce C. Hafen said this about covenant marriages:

"Three summers ago, I watched a new bride and groom, Tracy and Tom, emerge from a sacred temple.  They laughed and held hands as family and friends gathered to take pictures.  I saw happiness and promise in their faces as they greeted their reception guests, who celebrated publicly the creation of a new family.  I wondered that night how long it would be until these two faced the opposition that tests every marriage.  Only then would they discover whether their marriage was based on a contract or a covenant.

Another bride sighed blissfully on her wedding day, "Mom, I'm at the end of all my troubles!"  "Yes," replied her mother, "but at which end?"  When troubles come, the parties to a contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away.  They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they're receiving what they bargained for.  But 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%.  Covenant companions each give 100%.

Marriage is by nature a covenant, not just a private contract one may cancel at will.  Jesus taught about contractual attitudes when he described the "hireling", who performs his conditional promise of care only when he receives something in return.  When the hireling "seeth the wolf coming", he "leaveth the sheep and fleeth... because he... careth not for the sheep."  By contrast, the Savior said, "I am the good shepherd, ... and I lay down my life for the sheep."  Many people today marry as hirelings.  And when the wolf comes, they flee.  This idea is wrong.  It curses the earth, turning parent's hearts away from their children and from each other."

This class is really causing me to think a lot more about my marriage.  I know that I am blessed to have a better-than-many marriage, but there are things I can do with greater love and effort to help us have an extraordinary marriage.

Happy Anniversary Sweetie.  I love you.





 
 

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