Who is most important?

As I read the required reading this week on in-law relations and financial challenges (see B. Poduska, Till Debt Do Us Part, 2000, chapters 2 and 11 and J.M. Harper and S.F. Olsen , "Creating Healthy Ties With In-Laws and Extended Families" in C. H. Hart, L.D. Newell, E. Walton, and D.C. Dollahite (Eds.), Helping and healing our families: Principles and practices inspired by "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" 2005, pp. 327-334), I wondered how my husband and I have made it this far.  I’m not challenging the wisdom of the words shared, I’m just suggesting that I think we “broke” all of the “rules” outlined

by the authors but somehow muddled through most of them to rectify them.  In fact, after a particular difficult part of our marriage, I asked my husband how we had managed to make it through it and he simply replied, “We love each other.”

 It was not as simple as that but that was (and is) the underlying foundation – we love each other. We also had a solid foundation in commitment to covenants. This is meant as hope for those who are struggling in their marriage.

Advice from parents or other outside sources, such as shared from my marriage class, are definitely helpful (and needful) in righting a capsizing marriage, but I truly believe that love and commitment are the “glue”.

That being said, my marriage would have benefited from having known most of what was shared in this week’s readings.  The following statement though by Bernard Poduska is my favorite:  “…[B]oth individuals must commit themselves to thoughtful consideration of the consequences of their actions on their partners” (Till Debt Do Us Part, 2000, p. 198).  Sometimes as we transition (and it can be a 25+ year transition) into marriage, we forget that there is another person, THE most important person, to consider in our lives. The thoughtlessness that occurs can come from being a self-centered adult (which is normal) or an overabundance of family influence (which is normal) or children (which is normal) a really bad day at the office (again, which is normal).  What I’m trying to convey is that it is normal to mess up, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay in “normal”. One of my favorite scriptures is from an address given by an ancient prophet-king, King Benjamin, found in the Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19,

“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, 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.”

The natural man (or normal) is not only an enemy to God, but can be an enemy to a marriage.  The advice we receive from others (such as the readings from this semester) can help us overcome the natural man and help us create a celestial marriage.

Michaela Damm - Flickr

We need to recognize that we may be having a “normal” experience, but we need to improve ourselves, so we can have a “celestial” experience going forward.

Going back to the quote by Poduska, we need to consider our spouse thoughtfully as we make decisions or act on something. If we do, we will be turning towards them rather than inward or towards other influences.  This can only improve our marital relationship.  My spouse should be the most important person in my life and given the courtesy of being treated as such. I’m working on it.

Edited by Pauline Gold on Apr 3 at 4:02am

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