I
have been married for a little over a year and a half now, and during these
past eighteen months have been some of the happiest moments of my life. I’m not saying that marriage is all a breeze,
there are a lot of moments that can be challenging. It is hard to bring together two people from
different backgrounds, no matter how similar their families may be, and have
them agree on every aspect of running a household. There will be disagreements on a wide variety
of things, like how best to raise a family, how to handle finances, or even
what is the best way to cook chicken.
Obviously, children and finances are more important than how to cook
chicken, these are just a few examples of possible differences between a
husband and wife. Marriage is about
learning how to resolve these arguments and learning to become a better
person. My wife and I try to help each
other learn and grow whenever we have arguments, especially about what to eat
for dinner.
Marriage
is a topic of much debate in this day and age.
One of those many topics is divorce.
We live in a world where it is viewed as acceptable to get a divorce. It is even recommended if a husband and wife “have
grown apart.” Marriage is viewed as a
temporary union that can be terminated at any time and for any reason. In addition to divorce being so common,
couples will also live together to see if they can withstand each other. An
example of this is shared in The
State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2012 “Cohabiting couples
who have a child together are about twice as likely as married couples to break
up before their child turns twelve.”[1] Doing this just makes marriage seem like
something that isn’t permanent, that it can be changed easily, where in reality
marriage can be tough, but the rewards for working on improving the marriage
far outweigh any other option.
Another
possible reason that divorce is seen as more acceptable is that if a husband
and wife don’t get along perfectly, they aren’t perfect enough for each
other. So they get divorced and keep
searching for the perfect person. This
past week, Elder Bednar did a question and answer session with some students at
BYU-Idaho and one of the questions was “How do you know you’re marrying the
right person?” To which he responded along the lines of “You can’t find the
perfect person to just have a perfect marriage, you need to create it.” This kind of mentality is very rare in the
world we currently live in. We need to
strive to create our perfect marriage by practicing patience and selflessness
with our spouse now, not look for it elsewhere.
[1](“The State of Our Unions: Marriage in America 2012.” The National Marriage Project, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.stateofourunions.org /2012/presidents-marriage-agenda.php)
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