Marriage: Complements and Coming to the Lord

 
"Mawwage is what brings us togewah today."

(I had to do that.)

This month is our five year anniversary, so it seems appropriate for this month's testimony post to be about this third "M" (Motherhood, Missionaries, and Marriage).

Our love story is pretty basic. We met at college, got married, finished college together, and now, here we are, learning how to "adult" together.

After we got married, we had the opportunity to take a college class together. As a Religion requirement in the BYUI curriculum, we took the "Family Foundations" class together. To this day I look back on that class as one of my favorite and I'm using my class material for my jumping off points today.

The main material of the class is based around The Family: A Proclamation to the World and our text book was a collection of readings from our latter-day prophets to expand upon the teachings of the Proclamation.

In rereading the articles pertaining to marriage specifically, I found two themes that I'd like to share my thoughts on. It's nice because each has a pertinent graphic to go along with them.

The first is the idea of how men and women complement each other within the marriage relationship. The image of the Yin and Yang helps in visualizing this.

You'll notice that each half is the same size and they embrace each other more than a simple circle cut in half with a straight line would.  They also have a piece of the other within themselves. To me, this encompasses the meaning of "complement". Together, both halves become part of a perfect circle which they cannot do alone.

That is what marriage is meant to be.

Thinking of the parts that we share and how Charles and I complement each other, I can't help but think of our Types. Charles is a 3/4 and I am a 4/2. Sometimes it's funny to see how his secondary 4 comes out stronger than my dominant 4. In some things he has a keener sense of needing things to be clean and the paragraph in Carol's book about Type 4s and driving is spot-on for Charles.

The Type 4 things that we share are our loyalty to family, the strength of our personal convictions, and being strong authority figures in our respective circles of influence.

We also complement each other very well. His Type 3 push to get things done helps inspire me and helps me move on when I get stuck in a rut. My secondary Type 2 reminds him to be more gentle at times and my Type 4 comes in handy when things need to be done with more thoroughness (like helping him edit his blog).

Together we are trying to be the best parents we can be while helping to "parent" each other in our own growing processes. Another way to say that is that we nurture each other as well as our children.

Before I move on to my second theme, I'd like to add a quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:

In his wisdom and mercy, our Father made men and women dependent on each other for the full flowering of their potential. Because their natures are somewhat different, they can complement each other; because they are in many ways alike, they can understand each other. Let neither envy the other for their differences; let both discern what is superficial and what is beautifully basic in those differences, and act accordingly.

My second theme is that of coming to the Lord through the marriage relationship. I've already talked about how motherhood helps me to be more Christlike, but marriage does this as well for both of us.

The Lord Jesus Christ is the focal point in a covenant marriage relationship. Please notice how the Savior is positioned at the apex of this triangle, with a woman at the base of one corner and a man at the base of the other corner. Now consider what happens in the relationship between the man and the woman as they individually and steadily “come unto Christ” and strive to be “perfected in Him” (Moro. 10:32). Because of and through the Redeemer, the man and the woman come closer together. (Elder Bednar)

Charles and I are part of such a covenant marriage relationship because we were married in the temple. And, in fact, we had the above image in mind when we picked our wedding date, which is July 21 or 7/21.

Apparently, in Hebrew, 7 is the number that represents perfection, hence July, and then we multiplied 7 by 3 because of the three entities involved in our marriage (him, me, and God), so 21.

We are still human and sometimes it seems that the metaphorical length of the legs of our triangle are longer than at other times, but that is part of our journey. Remember, we are only five years into this and we covenanted to be together for eternity. Bumps along the way were part of the package deal that we signed up for.

The times when the triangle seems smaller and we become closer are the times when we are able to use the Atonement (think "at-one-ment") to forgive each other and become better individuals. It just so happens that those times are usually after a big "bump" came up in our road. This just shows that trials are really to be used to make us stronger.

So, Happy Anniversary to us!