My relationship with my in-laws definitely started out in a strange place. When my wife and I started dating, she had been a member of the church for just over 2 years, and her conversion to the church had caused quite a rift in their family. Her parents and grandparents were deeply hurt by her decision and concerned that she was going to live a life that would be filled with differences, cultural boundaries, and exclusion.

After they had just started to get used to the idea of her being a member, we started dating. Then, once we decided to get engaged, we decide to forgo the usual “go ask Dad for permission” talk. Instead, she and I sat down across the kitchen table from her Dad AND her mom, to break the news of our eventual engagement and temple marriage.

We communicated that we were planning on getting married in the temple. And granted, this was during the time where an out-of-temple marriage meant waiting a year or longer to be sealed. We had prayed and fasted and felt like a temple marriage was what God wanted, and what we wanted. However, this meant nobody in her family could attend.

We tried our best to appease their concerns, but ultimately they felt very hurt by our decision. Because of this, nobody from my wife’s immediate or extended family attended our wedding, sealing, or reception.

Looking back, I can completely empathize with how they (and everyone else) felt and would have likely felt the same way if I were in their shoes. However, I love them for it, because though in their eyes, we did something in spite of their feelings, they continued to love us anyway. While I wish they could have been to our wedding and the other festivities, to have shared that day together, I realize that a wedding day isn’t that important in the grand scheme of life and our eternal lives.

My wife and I take solace, and a little humor in the fact that though they didn’t attend our sealing/wedding, we will someday attend theirs. 🙂

Even though they didn’t choose to attend our wedding day, they embraced us as a married couple and treated us no differently than had we simply eloped. Though we’ve never spoken it, I feel a sense of forgiveness from them, and love them for that.

Over time, our relationship grew closer, and eventually, we moved in with them for about 18 months, shortly after the birth of our first child. Our move-in was planned, and helped us save up money for a house. However, we definitely didn’t plan to live there for 18 months, but after deciding to build a house (rather than just buy one), our 4 month stay turned to 18.

Luckily, through this time together, we were able to draw closer and become a lot more cohesive. While it was difficult to feel like our marriage was still within that “invisible” fence, we tried hard to maintain boundaries while still feeling like a cohesive family unit.

To me, my relationship with my in-laws has grown to a deep love and appreciation for them. It’s not superficial or cordial, we’re close and I feel like I can be my complete self around them. Something I didn’t feel comfortable with before we had moved in with them. My relationship with them is important to me, for a couple of different reasons.

I don’t believe that I can fully come to understand my wife until I’ve tried to understand her parents. After having lived with them, and seen them in all their emotions, elements, etc. It’s allowed me to better understand my wife’s personality, what makes her tick, why she is the way she is, and to love her more because of it.

I feel like a received a crash-course on her childhood, and it’s allowed me to better sync-up with her expectations and emotions on a deeper level.

Another reason my in-law’s relationship is so important to me is that I know we’ll be an eternal family someday. While they may not be members of the church, my wife and I have a strong testimony that they will one day accept the gospel, even though it will most likely be in the next life. 

Since I know that our relationship is eternal and that it’s not just a superficial part of being married, I’ve grown to love and appreciate them for who they are, what they believe, and what makes them unique.

A few years ago, I found myself sitting in another miserable and seemingly pointless meeting.

I’ve been part of the executive team at a consulting agency for the past 4 years, and we had been meeting weekly to discuss items related to our business. After a few months, I realized that these meetings had gotten entirely out of hand. We had no structure, no concrete agenda, we rarely started on time, and almost never ended with any consensus on anything at all. In a desperate attempt to save my “precious” time that I thought was being wasted, I practically demanded that we move to bi-weekly meetings. And so we did. Weekly meetings became biweekly meetings. By the nature of having them less frequently, we started to gain some efficiencies, but after a few meetings, we fell back into the slump of our useless unproductive chats. Now that I look back, I realize that the problem wasn’t the meeting frequency, it was the structure and intention of the meeting.

In marriage, we go through phases of our lives where we’re great at counciling together. There are also times in life where our “counciling” together looks a lot like my haphazard executive meetings. And the bad news is, a marriage counciling problem can’t be solved by meeting LESS frequently, and neither can a corporate counciling problem.

When my wife and I were first married, we were great at counciling together. We were both working part-time, taking online classes and we had all the time in the world to chat about our days, plans, and dreams.

Then, we were blessed with our first baby. Once life got a little more hectic, counciling and communicating regularly became just as difficult. While we’ve gone through ups and downs since becoming parents, we definitely still have a lot to learn about counciling together.

This week, from Elder Ballards talk, thing that impressed me the most was this. Seeking consensus and sharing perspectives is vital to a healthy marriage council. So often, we like to propose the logical, easy, or common-sense solution to someone else’s problem. In marriage, we share problems, so we must also share in the solution. I often find myself leading a conversation or discussing a problem in the way I would at work. But those tactics are unhealthy and unwanted in marriage. We need to collaborate together, seek each others opinions, dig deep for deeper reasoning, and listen intently. When we seek to serve and love our spouse with our minds, hearts, AND EARS, we’ll council together more like our Father in Heaven.

This has been such an interesting topic to read about this week. I especially enjoyed reading Brotherson’s article “Fulfilling the Sexual Stewardship in Marriage.” He brought up some very interesting points on what it means to fulfill this stewardship. He taught that in life we’re given many different stewardships. Our jobs, our callings, our families, our marriages, our health, and more. In these stewardships, we’re called to watch over them, help them grow, improve and take care. The same goes for our marriages and sexual relationship.

Brotherson makes a great point about the different voices vying for our attention on this subject. Especially as members of the church, we’ve been raised in a culture that has focused on the “powerful and compelling warnings of prophetic leaders” who are striving to lead us away from the adverse effects of misusing this power. While the world tries to over-normalize, sensationalize and distort the true principle of sexual intimacy. If we do our best to communicate openly and honestly with our spouse and treat this part of our relationship with care, love, and intention, we can increase our closeness and joy as couples. Ignorance really is the once of the enemies of fulfillment in marriage. And the best way to cure ignorance is to be educated. Good education comes from good, trustworthy material, sources, and open communication with our spouse.

As married partners, it’s even more important that we maintain complete fidelity and trust with our spouses. Not only should we seek to improve our sexual stewardship, but we must protect it at all costs. A large part of maintaining this stewardship is ensuring that it remains safe, pure, and free from any evil. Whether that’s inappropriate friendships, thoughts, actions, or anything that would destroy the trust of our spouse. In the readings this week, we learn of the dangerous stages of infidelity and how each step can be an easy step that leads to a dangerous spiral.

As children of God, and married eternal companions, it’s our obligation to keep our marriage relationship sacred and safe.

Rather than act as a careful investor, happy marriage partners throw open the doors of the storehouse and give kindness, help, and goodness.” (Gottman, 107)

How can we throw open the doors of kindness and goodness? It starts with us. I think the most applicable and accurate statement made by Gottman in his book is that equity is a destructive principle. Once we have given our all, and we should not expect an equitable reply. We consecrate ourselves in marriage when we dedicate our entire love to our spouse, with no strings attached.

My wife and I have had a fairly easy time communicating our troubles, needs, and trials throughout our marriage. But beyond that, one way that I try to “consecrate” myself to her is by paying attention to her love languages. 

I’ve begun to learn that words of affirmation and gifts are great love languages to her. Not so shockingly, my “love languages” are quite the opposite. The great irony of marriage is this, most couples have the opposite love languages. If we aren’t careful, we’ll guide our daily interactions based on the languages that WE desire, rather than what our spouse needs. For example, if physical affection isn’t a love language for your spouse, insisting on regular hugs when they’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed probably isn’t the answer. (Note to self)

Gottman states an metaphor so eloquently, it’s hard to imagine a better analogy. When the Savior knelt in Gethsemane, He himself asked for His burdens to be lifted, yet He never gave up, He continued forward and consecrated himself to God’s plan.

When the going gets tough in marriage, will we give up? Will we quit when times get hard or when things aren’t going our way? When our spouse has wronged us, or the relationship seems doomed, will we give in? The Savior himself knows what it’s like to be given a task that seems too hard, too painful, and seemingly unachievable. However, He carried on. Certainly, we can lean on Him and His atonement to carry us through the tough times.

Three days is all it took. Three long, horrifying, glorious, tumultuous days. But as the black clouds cleared, Easter morning came. He overcame physical and spiritual death. Because of Him, we are able to overcome all things. 

For our own lives, the tough times will undoubtedly last beyond three days. Luckily, our experiences in life will not be even a fraction of what He endured. The Savior bore His cross alone so that we wouldn’t have to. 

As we consecrate ourselves to our spouse and throw open the doors of kindness and love, we’ll feel God’s helping hand in growing closer to a more holy and perfect union. God has established marriage as the ultimate proving ground – the final test – to make us into what He knows we can be.

It was never meant to be easy. Eternal blessings require enduring effort.

Turning toward one another in marriage is a lifelong pursuit. This scripture in Doctrine and Covenants really impressed me.

D&C 64:33 “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.”

A marriage take time, care, love, patience and work. Each day we lay a brick in our foundation, or we take some away. Depending on how we act, think, react and “turn toward” our spouse, the relationship will improve or deteriorate.

One way that my wife and I work to “turn toward eachother” is to have regular phone calls throughout the day. These regular check-ins help us to feel more connected and to relive the stress we feel in our individual roles are parents and in my day job. By checking-in, we can see how the other is doing, talk about the wins, the losses, the stresses and the funny things of life. It’s been interesting to see how our relationship is different on the days that we don’t check-in.

Our faith in Christ and the gospel has helped us weather the tough storms of life, or the tough times in marriage. It’s given us an eternal perspective on our relationship and family. I can’t imagine living a life without the gospel, nor could I imagine a marriage or family life without the gospel and the Savior as our anchor. It’s allowed us to stay focused on the eternal perspective of our trials and shortcomings, knowing that we’re building a strong, lasting foundation that we’ll rely on through our lives and into eternity.

When we think of growing old together, it makes us giddy to think of all the time we’ll get to spend together. I’m grateful every day for my wife, the beautiful soul that she is and for her unbelievable patience with me. I’m also so  grateful to God for giving us a chance to live on earth, become more like him, and to have the opportunity to be sealed as eternal families, and to improve ourselves each day through this trial and joy of marriage.

Marriage is the utlimate proving grounds to becoming more like God. When I was younger, I remember listening to my parents argue a lot. I also thought to myself, “Geez, i’m never going to argue, yell at, or complain about my wife!” 

Little did I know, that marriage really does test your patience, temper, and attitude. Once we started having kids, it got a lot more difficult to communicate and spend quality time with each other. However, as I’ve studied so far in this class, I’m beginning to realize that a lot of the changes that need to be made to better our relationship, need to come from me, not from her.

For example, spending time each week on an actual date. This is a little obvious, but for us, it’s been a difficult thing to prioritize.  It’s so easy to justify it not happening. “We can’t afford a baby sitter.” “I don’t trust anyone to watch our kids…” The list goes on, but in the end, it’s up to us to sacrifice whatever we may be holding on to (money, stress, worry) and realize that it’s VITAL that we invest in our relationship. I had the realization earlier this week when reading, that weekly dates are not an expense, but they’re an investment. The “return on investment” yields better communication, more closeness, decreased stress, increased happiness, better alignment on goals and desires, and so much more. We finally went on a date last week for the first time in almost 6 months, and we were able to talk about really important things, like our plans for the future and how we want to grow our family. Had we not sacrificed the time, potential stress & worry to go on this date, we wouldn’t have made all the emotional progress we made together during that time together.

The one thing I know that I need to work on to better our marriage and relationship is to take better care of my physical health. For too long I’ve been lazy with exercise and poor eating habits. It’s reflected in less energy, poor sleep patterns, and more perceived laziness. I can see that this has had an effect on my wife because I can tell that she wants to me to be healthier, and is concerned for me. I know that if I make my health more of a priority and demonstrate that i’m taking better care of myself, this will help her feel heard, and that i’m reciprocating the self-care that I need into better care for her and our family.

This week, as we’ve learned more about marriage, i’ve thought alot about the marriages i’ve seen as I’ve grown up. First, I think of my parents. I think that my parents are generally happy people. However, they are very different from eachother. Earlier on in their marriage, and when I was younger, life was definitely stressful. I was the youngest of 7 children, the oldest being 14 when I was born. At age 5, my Dad had already been in two different bishoprics for close to 10 years, and then he was called as Bishop of our ward.

He served as Bishop from for almost over 9 years. During that time, I could tell it was very stressful for my parents and their marriage. While I was young, I noticed a definite negative sentiment overide. There was a lot of arguing between them and a general sense of contention. Without getting into any specific details, there was a LOT of contempt and stonewalling from my Dad when he would get upset with my Mom. 

However, as I got older and they became empty nesters. They were able to spend more quality time together and increase their love maps. My Dad started to work less hours, they went on more dates, more vacations, and were visibly happier and more of a close friendship than I’ve ever seen.

In Mosiah 3:19 it states that “For the ^anatural (Links to an external site.) ^bman (Links to an external site.) is an ^cenemy (Links to an external site.) to God, and has been from the ^dfall (Links to an external site.) of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he ^eyields (Links to an external site.) to the enticings of the ^fHoly Spirit (Links to an external site.), and ^gputteth (Links to an external site.) off the ^hnatural (Links to an external site.) man and becometh a ⁱsaint (Links to an external site.) through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a ^jchild (Links to an external site.), ^ksubmissive (Links to an external site.), meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

I remember in high school making the realization that the most important part of this verse is the word “yields”. When you think of the word yield in the context of traffic. To yield means that you’re currently en route in a specific direction with an intent to move forward. But, another object, person, or car comes into your way, and you need consciously stop your vehicle, and give deference to theirs.

With this context, when we “yield” to the enticings of the holy spirit, it’s more than just stopping and halting our natural tendencies. It’s about allowing the spirit to take deference in our lives and hearts. We have to become as a little child.

In marriage, we’re faced constantly with the tendencies of the “natural man”. 

Pride, anger, impatience, selfishness can cause us to destroy our marriages and relationships. If we focus on “yielding” to the spirit and our spouse, we’ll be happier and have a stronger friendship with our loved one.

This week, I was really impressed by the article, “Covenant Marriage” by Elder Bruce C. Haven.

From this reading i’ve leaerned a few new things about how to make my marriage more of a covenant marriage, and less like a contractual one. Elder Haven states, “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.”

After the honeymoon phase of marriage, we enter the phase of “real life”. Elder Haven talks about the three wolves that constantly attack our marriages. First, natural adversity. Life was always meant to be hard. Treking through the trials of life as a couple can be one of the most difficult challenges we face. Whether it’s parenting, finances, health or even how to spend personal time. Marriage is the refiner’s fire that helps us become selfless, caring, and compassionate. We should be willing to “lay down our lives” for our spouse when adversity comes, be willing to bear the brunt of the burden. It’s through sacrifice and service that we’ll come to love our spouses with an unconditional and undying affection.

The second wolf that lurks around our marriages is our own imperfections. Marriage is the joining of two very different people, in an eternal partnership meant to endure the test of time and last forever. However, when two things come together, there’s always friction. It’s important for us to learn how to cope with our differences, and use them as strengths. My wife and I are constantly learning from eachother, and are always trying to balance eachother out. Some nights, she has NO energy to deal with our restless 3 year old, while my patience may be a bit more stable, and vice versa. Luckily, we can work together in the ebs and flows to find a way to accomplish what we need to do as a parents and for ourselves.

Lastly, the third wolf fighting against marriage is excessive individualism. We live in a world where our attitudes and behaviors are focused around ourselves. Social Media culture is driven to focus on “me” and what “I” can gain from this world. How many followers, how many likes, etc

As we focus more on the covenant of our marriage, and spend more time serving our spouse, the imperfections, differences, and trials will melt away.

In his 2014 BYU Address, Elder Nelson stated something that really impressed me. I’ve oftentimes been asked, or even wondered myself, “Is it really that big of a deal for gay marriage to be legalized?” “Why do you care?” “How does that affect you?”

I believe President Nelson’s statement perfectly clarifies what my answer would be to those questions.

He stated, “God is the Father of all men and women. They are His children. It was He who ordained marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Marriage was not created by human judges or legislators. It was not created by think tanks or by popular vote or by oft-quoted bloggers or by pundits. It was not created by lobbyists. Marriage was created by God!”

It is my belief, that a large part of our test in life is to see if we will not only obey God’s commandments but defend them from attack. Satan tries to convince all people that not only are the commandments irrelevant but that God is as well. If you truly believe in God and believe in his commandments, you would also believe in the scripture “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.” 

There are many times in my life where I’ve felt persecuted for my unpopular beliefs, but in the end, I realize that God is our only judge. Part of this persecution is the “refiners fire” spoken of in the scriptures. The trials that will test our faith in God and his gospel, to see if we truly will do whatever he commands of us.

Our lives weren’t meant to be easy, we were sent to earth to BECOME something greater than we were before this life. A diamond is ONLY created once a piece of coal is placed under immense, excruciating pressure. Then, and only then, will it become a diamond. We too can become more like our Heavenly Father through a life of trials. However, God has promised to all those that keep his commandments, that we will be blessed temporally and spiritually. 

I have felt the blessings of God in my life, as I have sacrificed my wants for His. The gospel was meant to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. If we aren’t changing, then we aren’t fufilling the purpose of our life on earth.

President Kimball once stated, “ …only those who believe deeply and actively in the family will be able to preserve their families in the midst of the gathering evil around us.” 

For as long as I can remember, I can recall hearing at home, in church, and amongst family and friends that there’s an “attack on marriage”. I didn’t fully comprehend what this meant at the time, nor do I think many of the people talking about this “attack” understood what was really happening either.

While many religious organizations and individuals have focused on the definition of marriage, and the implications same-sex marriage have to their beliefs, I believe the issue of marriage goes much deeper than these areas.

Having been married for over 5 years now, I can start to see more vividly that marriage isn’t just being attacked, it’s at WAR.

I believe this battle is being waged mostly at home, and sadly, it’s dangerously imperceptible. If you’re reading this as someone who believes strongly in the social, economic, psychological, emotional, and spiritual benefits of marriage then you’ll most likely agree with my following perspective.

I believe that this entire marriage war is driven by two main weapons: distraction and contention.

Our homes and marriages are FILLED with opportunities to become both distracted and contentious. Whether it’s social media addictions, Netflix binging, or any other phone-based activities, these distractions will degrade the love, trust, closeness, and integrity of marriages worldwide if we continue to let them dominate our time and replace our family & spousal connections with a WIFI connection.

To combat these distractions in our family, we’ve set limits to TV and phone-usage to ensure we spend quality time together with each other and our kids. We also try to better control the content we view. We strive to make sure that our media is not overly-distracting and that it doesn’t bring contention into our home

When you look at this “marriage war” objectively, it’s easy to see how Satan uses technology to make us more distracted and contentious. Distraction distances us from close relationships by replacing quality time with personal time. Also, this technology causes a variety of negative psychological and emotional effects on ourselves that end up bleeding into our relationship. 

A few things we’ve done to help protect against contention is to always be quick to apologize and to fill our home with hymns or quiet music, rather than loud cartoons.

Making these simple changes to our daily lives has provided a lot of peace and happiness in our marriage and family. Not only has it improved our relationships with each other, but our home feels brighter and safer.