Tuesday, February 7, 2017

"Love is what we go through"


"Marriage is a gift from God to us,
the quality of our marriages is a gift from us to God."

These thoughts are from a journal entry dated March 2016
One day in my environmental health class were learning about teratogens and other causes for potential birth defects. I told a girl in my class how all this information became very personal to me now because I was 5 weeks pregnant. She excitedly gave her congratulations and then asked if I had felt sick at all. I almost scoffed and said, no, not at all! I feel so great! (I honestly have had no firsthand exposure to morning sickness and hardly knew it happened!) The class carried on and out of nowhere I didn't feel so good, I rushed to the bathroom and found myself vomiting in the toilet. How funny to know that was just the beginning of what would happen multiple times a day for multiple months ;)

I couldn't stand the smell of any food let be able to take the energy to prepare any sort of meal for my husband. This broke my heart. Upon returning to school I had this surreal vision of being the perfect wife and homemaker. Healthy meat-filled meals, all the chores done, a spotless clean apartment for when he turned from work.
I thought that was how our love would grow.

I thought perfect circumstances would yield the perfect foundation for a happy, healthy relationship. In my 'vision' this was the picturesque opportunity to show Preston how great of a wife I could be because by completely of all these 'checklist' items that would reveal my worth.
I was so humbled to learn how wrong I was, I had absolutely no idea JUST how much he truly LOVED me. He already loved me unconditionally. As he helped take care of me by doing the simplest things his love for me grew deeper than ever before. (I honestly did not clean a single dish for two whole months!) True love grows through caring for the well being of another.
Love grows through crisis, it is when we are incomplete and weak that we are able to grow and strengthen one another

That semester we had the blessing of President and Sister Bednar coming and speaking to the married couples. It was fascinating to hear them talk about how their personalities could not be more different but at the end of every discussion they are always able to come to an agreeance. They shared with us that
"Marriage requires work, it's not always roses and cupids. You just need to learn to love the work."
"You do not find the marriage you hope to have;
you create it. You create it from the differences of men and women. Why do we search for the perfect person? so that we can avoid hardness and heartache?

Opposition and trials were an inevitable part of life. It is designed that way so that we learn that we are not supposed to 'handle life' all alone. Preston has always taught me that relationships grow through crisis. We sometime wish we could put our most precious relationships in an incubator so they can grow in the safety of a perfectly regulated and controlled environment but ultimately that's not how they grow.
In this life we have the opportunity to learn to love each other as the Savior loves us, unconditionally despite our incredible and recurring weaknesses.

I'm very grateful for my mission president always sharing this valuable lesson with us, "Love is what we go through, True love is what we go through together."


"Be able to laugh, this is serious business but don't be so serious that it's not fun. Don't stress over the things that you cannot control. Laugh and Love. Don't waste your whole life waiting for happiness to come. Create it." -Elder David A. Bednar



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