Week #4 Doctrine of Eternal Marriage

They Lived Happily Ever After 

The phrase "and they lived happily ever after" is repeated often in fairytale stories.  The knight rides in, swoops the lady off her feet, they fall in love, marry, and ride into the sunset followed with the phrase "and they lived happily ever after." Some may question the validity of that fairytale. I just simply question the simplicity of "happily ever after", because marriages require hard work, sacrifice, forgiveness, and a willingness to stay close when challenges become difficult.  

Many marriages today can be termed, as described by Elder Bruce C. Hafen, a "contract marriage". He described this marriage where couples only give 50%, couples end the relationship when challenges set in, and can be cancelled at will. (see Hafen, B.C., "Covenant Marriage", Ensign, Nov 1996, 26) His advice to couples is to create a more enduring and faithful marriage which he termed "covenant marriage" 

When a young college student in my first semester, I dated a young man who after a month of dating, and two weeks of avoiding me, decided to break up with me. He called me and told me over the phone the reason why and then I finally understood the reasons behind his excuses and his 'busy-ness'. I was upset and heartbroken and needed to find solace and peace, so I decided to walk to the nearby LDS temple. I found a quiet hill and sat there overlooking the temple. As I coped with my heartache, I prayed to my Heavenly Father.  In my conversation with him, I made a covenant with my God. I resolved that I would take the heartache and pain that came with dating, accept and forgive without bitterness, if one day God would send a great young man into my life, who would love me and treat me and our children well. I left that hill overlooking the temple that night with a healed heart and peace that God was watching over me and would bless me in my life. 

My covenant marriage began that night, long before my "knight in shining armor" came into my life. That promise I made with God helped me through the challenges of dating. Then, one day a few years later towards the end of a dance, a young man who unbeknownst to me had noticed me earlier in the dance and kept his eye on me throughout the dance, had waited until the end to ask me to dance. Fearing he may sound too forward, he asked me to go on a date the next weekend. We quickly became friends and soon I knew this was the young man, that on that October night God promised He would send into my life, so I agreed to marry him. And then on a bright, sunny morning a few months later, I knelt across from him in the temple, surrounded by our family, and we both agreed to creating an enduring and everlasting "covenant marriage." 

Now, twenty-six years later, our happily ever after has not come simply by chance, it has come through hard work, sacrifice, forgiveness, and a willingness to stay close when challenges weighed upon our shoulders. Our covenant marriage included adding God to our partnership. God has guided and helped us through the challenges of parenting, through job losses, through the complications of moving, and through our imperfections. My husband became my best friend before I fell in love with him. He still is my best friend. He completes me for neither one of us are whole without the other. As Elder Bednar taught, "the ultimate blessings of love and happiness are obtained through the covenant relationship of eternal marriage." That my friends, is the best kind of marriage to have—the one where we create our own "Happily Ever After"! 

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Happily Ever After comes with a covenant marriage and stays as both spouses continue to give 100% to their marriages. When we marry or even before, we dream that we will always have that "happily ever after". Whether we have the marriage we dream of or only dream of that marriage, we can focus on our part to create commitments with ourselves, with God, and with those whom we love, which will help us find happiness here and now and into our ever after.