Inspiration in Marriage

All my life, I’ve been taught that marriage is sacred. Marriage begins in the temple of the Lord to sealed for eternity. Yet, how does one live with one person for eternity? Sure, one can DO what we are counseled to do but does that really help us understand the inbetween of a telestial relationship to the heights of a celestial relationship?

My husband and I began our marriage in the Portland temple,

www.lds.org

sealed for time and all eternity. We attend church weekly. We have had four wonderful children together. We have date night almost weekly. We attend the temple. We pay our tithing. We have family prayer and family scripture reading and family home evening. We serve in the Church. We DO all that we have been instructed to do within the Church to have an eternal marriage. But, I don’t feel like it’s enough. We have a certain disconnect – it’s not bad, but it’s not good either. I wonder where we have gone wrong.

Enter FAML300 – Marriage (and a host of books and articles on marriage). As I mentioned last week, I’ve read a lot. Some suggestions have worked and some haven’t. Why? I don’t really know. My husband and I are two very different people and what may sound great to me might not sound great to him. I think though as Brother Goddard, in his book Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, states “Applying these principles to marriage requires inspiration.”

Photo by Patrick Selin on Unsplash

I have felt inspired in some of the choices I have made in improving my marriage, but I don’t think I purposely sought inspiration. As I go through the course this semester, I will seek inspiration from the suggestions received from the material presented. Thus, not EVERY suggestion will work for us. I need to prayerfully consider each suggestion – as instructed in Doctrine & Covenants 9:7-9 – I need to ponder, make a decision, then pray to know if it is right. My marriage is as important to me as it is to the Lord and He will guide my path.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks to learn more about the many suggestions I will be given in this class. I will report on how they work out for us. As I mentioned last week, I’m optimistic that each author has much to offer in my marriage improvement repertoire.