Thoughts From My Mom

*I asked my Mom to write something about marriage for me to post in my marriage series.  Many thanks to her for taking the time to write her thoughts.

My beautiful Mom and her dog Lizzie

Marriage was ordained by our Father in Heaven. It is the natural thing to desire
someone to spend your life with; someone to love and someone to love you.
Marriage is a very serious commitment and is not to be taken lightly. After having
been married nearly 58 years now I can look back over my own experiences and
experiences of others and I can truly say marriage is a wonderful thing.
Considering how inexperienced we are as youth, I think it sometimes a miracle
that as many marriages survive as they do.

Every marriage has its challenges and will have its lessons to learn. Marriage is the
perfect place for couples to learn those lessons together. It is a great place to
learn patience, forgiveness, money management, sacrifice, compromise.  No one is perfect in this life…but happiness can be found despite difference if patience and tolerance is practiced.

I think one lesson most of us learn early in marriage is that the only person we can change is ourselves. Yes, we do make changes to make our mates happy, but demanding or insisting on change is probably going to cause resentment more than change.

When a person marries, they need to consider that the person they are becoming
partners with is a precious child of God. I think each person should consider it
one of their responsibilities to help their mate to become the person Heavenly
Father wants them to be. That does not include nagging….it simply means
encouraging them when they are trying and supporting them in ways that are
helpful.

Marriage is a great institution that takes lots of love, patience,and working
together to solve problems. It takes loyalty to ones’ spouse. Even though
marriage can be challenging, there is one way to make sure it is successful: make
Heavenly Father you third partner. After careful discussion together to solve a
problem or make a decision, that decision should be taken to Heavenly Father for
verification. That doesn’t mean everything will be easy…but it can be right!! That
makes a happy marriage very likely.