Plenty of Good Apples

Apples are so delicious. I love apples. They are so healthy. Since they're full of Vitamin C they may help chase away colds. There are many different flavors of apples. My favorite ones are so fresh from the farm that they have a strong apple smell when I walk past. Occasionally there's a bad apple in the mix. You've seen them. There's just something bad that got inside and rotted the inside of the apple. Those apples might even look good on the outside but once they're cut into it's pretty obvious that something is wrong. These occasional bad apples have not lessened my enthusiasm for eating apples. An apple is still healthy and delicious to me.

This is just like marriage. Marriage is so wonderful. I love marriage. Marriage is healthy for the body and the spirit. Marriage is the best way to raise a family. I love a marriage that just works well for husband and wife. Occasionally there's a bad marriage. For some reason or another something bad gets in between the husband and wife. The marriage is horrible for one or both partners. The marriage might look alright to others, or it might be obviously broken to everyone at a glance, either way the couple knows it's not working. So, it's a bad marriage. These bad marriages do not lessen my excitement for marriage. Marriage is still wonderful to me. I love marriage.

Never Leave a Man When He's Down

My Mom always says, "Never leave a man when he's down, that's just cruel". If he loses his job or is having a hard time, you can't just walk out. It's just too mean. The reverse applies too.

Review: The Peacegiver

"The Peacegiver" by James L Ferrell

The couple in this book seemed just like Ryan and I. They'd been married 12 years, got married in the Los Angeles Temple a year after the man returned from his mission, etc. Then, I read on and hated how their marriage was. It wasn't really like ours at all. They had been fighting for years and spent lots of time not speaking to each other. They were both about ready to separate. All I can say is, marriage is not meant to be like the broken relationship described in this book. Marriage is meant to be a happy, rewarding union between man and woman. The book showed how it could be too. What I liked was the idea that whose fault their marital problems were, didn't matter. The Savior had already accepted their sins and the fallout from those sins upon himself. So, it was each individual's job to forgive, regardless of whether the other one forgave. In this way, the book was very uplifting.

The book mentioned how marital sins were addictive like alcoholic or drug sins. The marital sins like "not speaking to each other", "thinking oneself superior to the other", "hateful words" and such changes a person to feel like they are justified in doing these sins and makes them commit more and worse sins of that nature as if the sin itself were addictive. It's only through the Savior's atonement that we can get out of vicious cycles of destructive behavior that destroy our marriages. At times during the read, I found myself thinking, thankfully I wasn't stuck with a husband like that. But, a marriage relationship is like a living thing. It needs attention, love, time, patience, nurturing, etc, to grow well. Our marriage could have gone that way had we let it. I have a daily choice in my relationship how to treat my spouse. I don't have the choice how he treats me, but I can do a lot to shape how he wants to treat me. I certainly am in complete control of how I treat him. The book showed how we each have our own responsibility to make our marriage the best it possibly can be. The Savior will help us with that. If we rely on Him, I believe we can have what marriage is meant to be: a happy, rewarding union between man and woman.

Investing in the One You've Got

It takes work to stay married. But, doesn't it take even more work to divorce and remarry?

After a divorce, I often see both spouses eventually try to remarry. The effort they put into remarrying translates to: lots of money, time, hope and attention spent on lots of dates. They'll spend tons of time, money and attention into their appearance - working out, getting new clothes, haircuts, etc to look like a good catch. In fact they're willing to become their best self, so that somebody will fall in love with them. Anybody who has dated knows that lots of these dates are going to be awful. That's just how it goes sometimes, especially while you are working on improving yourself. Often the dates can be so awful that the individual may begin to wonder if they should continue the process, after all it's really taking up a lot of their resources. Then, often after soooo much work, they find a match that works. They put a lot more time, money, hope and attention into this person, while continuing to work on themselves and hopefully end up marrying to them.

This pattern shows up so frequently, and I always wonder what would have happened if both of them had put all that money, time, hope and attention into each other when things started looking bad. And what if they invested all that time, money and attention into their current spouse? This would be a good point to work on their appearance as well - working out, getting new clothes, new haircuts, etc, to look their best for their spouse, as an offering to their spouse when the relationship is rocky. Not just working on their appearance, but also trying to make themselves a person worth loving. Sure, they might get some awful "dates" out of their spouse at first. But, if they continue they might realize that they are investing in the individual that made them fall in love and get married in the first place. They also might become the individual their spouse fell in love with in the first place. If they continue investing so much time, hope, money and attention into their spouse, they might just fall in love again. After all, they already went through the process of falling in love with this individual once, filtering that spouse out from the rest of the human race as one being a great match.

Please, try putting a lot of work into your relationship, before divorcing and putting a lot of work into other relationships.

Is it worth saving?

We go to incredible lengths to save a life in danger. The world might be a very different place if we worked as hard whenever a couple's life together was in danger.

The importance of being right

Before starting that argument, ask yourself one question:

Is it more important to be right, or to be married?

Eternal Marriage

Eternal marriage is something that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints look forward to and believe in. When we get sealed(married) in one of our temples, it is for forever. I've(Leah) watched a lot of couples who have been sealed together, for longer than I've been alive. Of the ones I am closest to, they have all stayed married to their first spouse. They are generally happy. The couples have fun together, work together, achieve goals together, raise children together, visit grandchildren together, retire together, etc. Lots of happiness and peace come from a lifestyle like this.

image credit lds.org

There are many others that I have watched, for longer than I've been alive, that were not sealed in the temple. They married elsewhere, if they married at all. Of the ones that I am closest to, that didn't marry in the temple, there have been many relationship problems. None have ended up staying with their first spouse and most have been through many divorces and remarriages. Some ended up with children they were not prepared to care for, while others lost custody of children they had hoped to raise.
If this is the difference a focus on eternal marriage makes, I choose the eternities with my husband and family.