A Prideful Near Miss

In President Ezra Taft Benson’s talk Beware of Pride, President Benson warns us about the destructive tendencies of pride and the damage that is done by pride.  He says, “The central feature of pride is enmity-enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means ‘hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.’ It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.” I had never thought about pride in this way. Pride is like a destructive missile launched for destruction. If we do not shoot it down, it can, and often times will, destroy us.
I have always thought of pride as self-centeredness, cockiness, and a sense of being better than others. I had never thought of pride in terms of my relationship with God and willingness to obey and honor Him. President Benson tells us that enmity means being rebellious, hard-hearted, stiff-necked, unrepentant, puffed up, easily offended, and a sign seeker. As I thought about this definition of pride I began to reflect back upon my journey and choices in life and how pride has negatively affected me and the course of my life.
I was sixteen years old when I began to question the truthfulness of the gospel. It was important to me that I look around at other religions and investigate to see if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was the right one for me. I asked my mom if I could begin attending other churches with some of my friends. She vehemently disagreed with me going to other churches and told me that as long as I lived in her house I would attend church with her. Without pride I would have humbly accepted her answer but being a stubborn, prideful teenager, I decided to move out of my parents’ home instead.
I moved in with my boyfriend and quit attending church altogether. In a few short months I was pregnant and was expecting our first child. I began feeling repentant and humbled. As an expectant mother who wanted to do right by my child and teach him of God, I began feeling pulled back to church. I attended church for a few weeks and very quickly I realized that people were looking at me as I walked by and whispering and talking about me in the hallways at church.  Without pride I would have turned my sad, hurt, and offended heart over to the Savior but being a prideful and offended young woman, I quit attending church altogether. I spent ten years being inactive in living the gospel. Without pride I would have turned myself toward the Lord and asked Him to help strengthen me to endure the judgment of others and to guide my life but being defiant, rebellious, and justified in my stiff-neckedness, I remained distant from the gospel.
I married my boyfriend and after the birth of our second child my marriage and family became intensely unhappy and stressful. I could sense that without serious intervention, my family was in danger of breaking up. I began feeling that it was my responsibility as a wife and mother to be an example to my family and most importantly to teach my children they were children of God. I began to humble myself and to do some soul searching. I began to pray again for the first time in many, many years and ask for direction and guidance. It didn’t happen overnight but I did make my way back to church with my children. My children and I have been active members of the Church for 13 years. My marriage and family have remained intact and are better and stronger than ever! My husband is still not a member of the Church but he has seen the good that living by the Church’s teachings has done in my life and in the lives of our children and how happy it makes us and he supports us in our church attendance and church callings.
I can see in retrospect, an almost immediate change in our lives as a direct result of my willingness to submit to God and His will. As soon as I began to let go of my pride and submit to my Heavenly Father and to welcome His love back into my life, the happiness of my home and family began to improve. I know that pride has nearly destroyed me and my relationship with not only my husband and children, but more importantly, with my Heavenly Father. I am thankful that I have been welcomed back into our Father’s fold through His grace and charity. I am thankful that I have been able to shake off the shackles of pride in order to try to live my life in accordance with the gospel and in keeping my sacred covenants. As I took inventory of my most destructive prideful phases of life I realize how much happier I am as I try not to be prideful. I thank my Heavenly Father! My life has been richly blessed!

Happily Ever After

 

 When I was a little girl I had the same fairy tale vision of my marriage that a great many other little girls have; a handsome young man would fall deeply in love with me and woo me with his outpouring of lovely sentiments, generous gifts, and selfless acts of love. He would then vow his undying love for me in the wedding of my dreams and from that moment on he would happily and willingly do my every bidding because he loved me so much. Imagine my shock when I married my husband and over the first few months this vision of my "Happily Ever After" began quickly unraveling!
As a married woman living in the real world I recognized very early on that this vision was absolutely not going to play out the way I always thought it would and I felt like I got ripped off! My husband was selfish and not at all interested in doing my every bidding. He was a pig who was grouchy and only concerned about what he wanted and in getting me to do whatever it was he wanted me to do! At least that was my perception as a young 19 year-old bride.
It took me several years and lots of soul-searching to understand that we each have a responsibility to our spouse and their needs in order to have a strong relationship. In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Jon M. Gottman says, “[Romance] is kept alive each time you let your spouse know he or she is valued during the grind of everyday life.” (p.88) The truth is that we have to deliberately turn toward one another every day if we are to be happily connected by doing the seemingly insignificant things that over time add up to mean so much. Gottman refers to the “bids” spouses make for each others attention and says that the way each partner responds to those bids is either a turning away or turning toward their spouse. (p. 88)
I found this quote by Fawn Weaver. She says, "Happily Ever After is not a fairy tale. It is a choice." I know I have to work on my marriage to have a happy, successful relationship.
My husband likes to have a delicious homemade dinner each night when he comes home from work. I couldn’t care less about homemade dinners but I learned to cook dinner every night for him because it matters to him. I have also realized cooking his dinner allows me to do what I like. I like to spend time together with my husband. As we eat dinner we talk about our day. He would probably prefer to go without rehashing our days every night but for me, having his undivided attention lets me know that I matter to him. When he will take a few minutes each night to sit with me and talk over our days, I feel closer to him and it helps me to process my day. Having dinner together is a small something we do each day that matters to both of us. I have realized we choose daily whether to pursue our "Happily Ever After" by choosing to put our spouse and our marriage first.
As our children have grown and our alone time together has increased, we have begun doing more of the little things together. We run errands, clean the house, do yard work, and play games or watch movies together. I have noticed an increase in fondness and admiration as we have turned toward one another in these seemingly small ways. Our relationships has intensified and strengthened and we feel more connected to one another. He reaches out to me more often for love, guidance, reassurance, and support and I do the same in return because we know that the other person will be there for us. I am excited to explore the next phase of our relationship as we are preparing to become “empty nesters” and it is because of the small and simple acts of love and turning towards each other that we are deepening our love and strengthening our marriage. My marriage may have started out with distress and grief over the realities of our relationship but at this stage in our marriage I have every reason to believe that we are well on our way to our "Happily Ever After".

Our Wedding Day September 1994

Our 21st Wedding Anniversary 2015

Marriage is Difficult!

 

Marriage is difficult! Anyone who has ever been married (and is honest) will admit that being married to someone takes a great deal of patience, compassion, selflessness, and sacrifice. As mortals, we are naturally more concerned about ourselves and our own needs. Mosiah 3:19 says, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be forever and ever…” Being married requires us to overcome the natural tendencies we have and to put the needs and desires of our spouse first.

I recall a time in my marriage when we had only been together for a few months. It was my desire that we spend some time together on this one particular evening, but my husband had a different idea about how he wanted to spend his evening. My husband wanted to sit around playing his video games instead. We began arguing about who deserved to “get their way” and it erupted into a screaming match. I became furious at his stubbornness and the fact that he would not yield to my wants was infuriating. Eventually, I stormed out of the room and locked myself in my bedroom.

After about twenty minutes my husband came to the door of the bedroom and began trying to smooth things over with me. He said he was sorry and that he realized that there were going to be times in our lives when he was going to have to give up what he wanted in order to help me have what I wanted. While I had been alone thinking in the bedroom I had realized the very same thing. Sometimes we should give up what we want to accommodate our spouses. We both learned a tremendously valuable lesson together that night and in the end, we decided to compromise and play video games together so that he could do what he wanted, play video games, and I could do what I wanted, spend time with him.

In the book Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage, H. Wallace Goddard says, “As we turn our hearts to God, they will be opened to our partners. Turning to our partner’s requires us to worry a little less about our own needs.” I know this to be true. I have seen God opening our hearts to one another many times during our 21 years of marriage. We have learned how to worry about our own needs a little less. God wants us to succeed and when we ask for His help, He will show us our partner through His eyes.

As I sat alone in my bedroom that night, I was praying for help from God. I wanted a marriage where love and selflessness would bring our hearts together. My husband was praying as well while he sat alone in the living room. God spoke to our hearts and helped our two hearts become one and we each put our spouse's needs first that night. As I have continued to look for ways to help my husband, to show him I appreciate and care about him, we have come together and our relationship has grown stronger. I also notice when he has put my needs above his own and I appreciate the daily sacrifices he makes for me.

The Desired Failure of the Four Horsemen

 During this week’s reading I was pleased by the reaffirmation and recognition that my marriage has grown and evolved in a good way over the twenty-one years we have been together. The pitfalls of couples in distress that were described in John Gottman’s The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work used to be daily occurrences in my home. My husband and I married quite young and we both felt the need to gain our own independence from one another and to feel more important than the other. Rather than working together like teammates for our common good we were competing for first place with one another like we were opponents. In Mosiah 3:19 we are told that the natural man is an enemy to God and that as mortals we would have to learn to be submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon us. For the first few years of my married life I was failing miserably at all of these Christ-like characteristics within the bonds of my own marriage.

While I was reading this week about the Four Horsemen in Gottman’s book I was reminded of the numerous occasions when I was critical, defensive, contemptuous, and a stonewaller. These behaviors were nearly ingrained in my by my parents and their poor examples to me. These behaviors are what came “naturally” to me. As I matured and began to see my marriage in a broader perspective, I realized that if I didn’t take ownership of my selfish ways and change my heart, my marriage would most likely be doomed to failure or at best, we’d stay unhappily married. The prospect of failure or unhappiness tied knots in my stomach. I decided to rebuild my marriage the Lord’s way.

It has taken me many years to begin to understand my role as a wife. I still have a long way to go but with the Savior’s help I was able to become more submissive and less contemptuous, more humble and less critical, meeker and less defensive. I was able to abandon old habits and tendencies and begin instituting new ones that were patterned after Jesus Christ. In the early years of marriage I wanted to be most important. I wanted to be right. I wanted the last word. I wanted to be the boss. I was prideful. Once I began to understand that these selfish desires would only drive my husband and me further and further apart, I began to panic and try to figure out what I could do to begin mending our relationship.

Through much prayer and effort my marriage is being healed. We are still a work in progress and we still have a long way to go in establishing a celestial marriage but I have hope and faith that with the skill set we have learned, we are well on our way to a happy, eternal marriage. I believe that we will consistently continue to move away from the negativity of the Four Horsemen Gottman described and toward