When I read this passage from Elder Henry B. Eyring's talk titled, "Our Perfect Example", it really summed it up for me. He said, "Just as Jesus used a child in His mortal ministry as an example for the people of the pure love they must and could have to be like Him, He has offered us the family as an example of an ideal setting in which we can learn how to love as He loves. That is because the greatest joys and the greatest sorrows we experience are in family relationships. The joys come from putting the welfare of others above our own. That is what love is. And the sorrow comes primarily from selfishness, which is the absence of love. The ideal God holds for us is to form families in the way most likely to lead to happiness and away from sorrow. A man and a woman are to make sacred covenants that they will put the welfare and happiness of the other at the center of their lives. Children are to be born into a family where the parents hold the needs of children equal to their own in importance. And children are to love parents and each other."
Elder Eyring described this kind of love that his dad showed his mom during the last part of her life. He said "I saw this in my parents' marriage. In my mother's final illness, the more uncomfortable she became, the more giving her comfort became the dominant intent of my father's life. He asked that the hospital set up a bed in her room. He was determined to be there to be sure that she wanted for nothing. He walked the miles to work each morning and back to her side at night through those difficult times for her. I believe it was a gift from God to him that his power to love grew when it mattered so much to her. I think he was doing what Jesus would have done out of love".
This week as I was reading chapter 4 & 5 in John Gottman's book "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work," I learned a lot about enhancing your love map and how to nurture your fondness and admiration towards your spouse. There were a lot of questions that you could answer to see how strong your love map is with your spouse and he gave ideas to help strengthen that map. Included was a game that you could play to see how much you know about your spouse. This creates an opportunity to learn more about your partner. In chapter 5 it gave a detailed calendar of what you can do to increase your admiration and fondness for your spouse. This gave me a lot to reflect on and to figure out the areas where I can improve on. I feel like my husband and I have a pretty solid love map but there are always areas that we can improve on or add to. One of the struggles in our marriage is when our kids were little and demanded much of our time, energy and money, we would have a fall back on just staying at home watching something as our dates. We weren't taking the time to talk and to really date each other. It is not that we didn't want to but we were both so tired and exhausted at the end of the day. We would have more arguments because we weren't communicating about what we were feeling or what we might need from each other. One night I remember we finally took the time to talk to see where we could improve and add variety to our monotonous schedule and rut of dating. We decided that we missed going out and spending time talking and laughing together. We made a plan to try to go on real dates more often. We swapped babysitting so we could attend the temple more often. For Christmas that year he surprised me with season tickets to our Philharmonic. It was the perfect thing for us. For 5 months there was a date on the calendar with a planned outing. We looked forward to these nights. We budgeted for a babysitter and dinner and looked forward to that time to spend together. We put time into looking nice and getting dressed up for this event. This small thing helped remind us that we still needed to date each other and to strengthen our relationship if we were to strengthen our family. To provide a good loving environment for our children and to show them that this is important to keep dating in a marriage. We have done so much better since that moment. Life does get busy and sometimes we have to have our date nights at home but we try to do things that will help us nourish our friendship. I think it has also helped us to look for small ways to show that love and appreciation on a daily basis. This is true love when we put our spouse's needs and welfare before our own. As I look back at any argument or fight almost all are from one or both of us being selfish. We can trace many problems in the world back to selfishness. That is the natural man, when we only are focused on ourselves. We need to be more like our Savior Jesus Christ and be selfless and looking for ways to serve and lift others. Jesus Christ ministered to all those who he came into contact with and each encounter was tailored to that person as an individual. He did this out of love. We can follow His example. We can start by ministering to our spouse first.
No comments:
Post a Comment