“Mom, so-and-so was wondering about the first time you and dad kissed?” This question was asked amongst comments of “No, I didn’t!” and “It was your idea!” We all laughed {and there might have been a few ‘eeewwww’s} as I recounted that fateful day so long ago. It dawned on me we’d never told that particular part of our love story before.

My children love to hear our love story. They enjoy hearing how mom and dad met, went to the same college, and eventually fell in love. They like to look at the photo albums and see the progression of “Here we are sight-seeing standing several feet apart from each other” to “We like each other so we’ll stand close to each other now” to “We’re in love, our faces are close together while we take self-portraits with the camera.”

A couple of days ago a package was delivered from my parents. Inside, tucked away in a corner of the box, were leftover wedding announcements from our marriage almost 18 years ago. My son pulled out the picture in awe. He’d never seen it before.

Look how young and skinny and gorgeous we were! I told him more of our love story. My son looked at the photo and wanted to know if he could keep it to put in his scrapbook. To remember.

Do your children know your love story? How your family came to be? Our children know ours. They know they are a part of our love story. They also know it is still being written; it didn’t end when we got married.

The great plan of happiness revealed to prophets is the plan for a happy family. It is the love story between husband and wife, parents and children, that renews itself through the ages.

(Boyd K. Packer, The Shield of Faith)

The Family: A Proclamation to the World states “Husband and Wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children….Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan.” Why is marriage so essential?

Elder David A. Bednar taught us two reasons: “Reason 1: The natures of male and female spirits complete and perfect each other, and therefore men and women are intended to progress together toward exaltation. Reason 2: By divine design, both a man and a woman are needed to bring children into mortality and to provide the best setting for the rearing and nurturing of children.“

The best setting for children to be born is within a family, with a father and a mother who love and honor each other. And who keep that love alive through the thick and thin of things. A good love story is one in which a couple perseveres through the trials of life together.

The first home my husband and I lived in (not counting the apartment we had while in college) was an old 800 sq foot, non-insulated wood clapboard house. It was actually three office buildings from an old ghost town called Wonder here in Nevada. The buildings were brought down by horse and buggy in the 1920’s and slapped together for a family of 9 that were living in a one room house. That one room house was still in our yard and full of antique things like a cast iron wood burning cookstove. It was a dumpy little place compared to today’s standards. There was only one bedroom, a small bathroom, a living room and a kitchen. We had four children before we moved. It was a tight squeeze, a lot of work in the winter to keep it heated, and a lot of work in the summer to keep it cool.  But we loved living there. The struggles we experienced brought my husband and I closer together.

A favorite movie of ours is McLintock starring John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.  One of the most memorable quotes is when GW (John Wayne) tells his daughter Becky what she’ll get when she is married. The most important part I italicized.

“Becky! Come here. Somethin’ I ought to tell you. Guess now’s as good a time as any. You’re going to have every young buck west of the Missouri around here tryin’ to marry you – mostly because you’re a handsome filly, but partly because I own everything in this country from here to there. They’ll think you’re going to inherit it. Well, you’re not. I’m going to leave most of it to, well, to the nation really, for a park where no lumbermen’ll cut down all the trees for houses with leaky roofs. Nobody’ll kill all the beaver for hats for dudes nor murder the buffalo for robes. What I’m going to give you is a 500 cow spread on the Upper Green River. Now that may not seem like much, but it’s more than we had, your mother and I. Some folks are gonna say I’m doin’ all this so I can sit up in the hereafter and look down on a park named after me, or that I was disappointed in you – didn’t want you to get all that money. But the real reason, Becky, is because I love you, and I want you and some young man to have what I had, because all the gold in the United States Treasury and all the harp music in heaven can’t equal what happens between a man and a woman with all that growin’ together. I can’t explain it any better than that. 

That’s what happened to us while living in our first home, and all the subsequent homes since. Oh, and working on a farm helped too.  We learned what the Lord meant when he said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24) or stated a little differently in modern day scripture “Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else.” (D&C 42:22)  If a couple is not careful there can be other ‘cleavings’ in their marriage: work, sports, friends, hobbies, even parents.

I have been greatly blessed in my life to have wonderful examples of what a good marriage looks like. If I were to ask them what the secrets are of their success I’m sure I’d receive answers that are similar, but also get answers that are different, for each couple has different dynamics and has had to find what worked just for them.

My husband and I have been married now for almost 18 years. In some respects it doesn’t seem very long at all, but when I look at all we’ve experienced it seems like forever. Our marriage is strong. We are living our love story. That can be attributed to a great number of things but for this post I narrowed it down to three.

1. Put God first. I know my husband loves the Lord; loves Him more than me. That’s okay! I love the Lord more than I love my husband and that’s as it should be.

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.

We should put God ahead of everyone else in our lives.

The Lord said, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37).

(Ezra Taft Benson, “The Great Commandment—Love the Lord,” )

By putting the Lord first we have seen everything else fall into place. We have been carried through our trials and blessed beyond measure.

2. Fidelity and Trust. When we were married we made a covenant of chastity to one another, to stay virtuous and true.

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. 

The Family: A Proclamation to the World, paragraph 7

Having complete trust in each other, is vitally important. It builds a solid foundation not only for couples but also for the children who are a part of the family. When children see the loyalty their parents have for each other, and for them, it gives them security. We support each other in all our endeavors, big and little.

3. Humor. I guess I could have said any number of things for #3 like forgiveness or flexibility. But truth be told, we like to laugh an awful lot. Humor helps diffuse tense situations. It keeps us young and brings us closer together. We have a great number of “inside” jokes that we share just between the two of us, and others that are shared just in our family.

I hope we can accumulate many laugh wrinkles together. I want to be able to look at my husband’s face when we are old and see wrinkles made by years and years of laughter. I want my children to remember the laughter that filled our home as we enjoyed being around one another.

What are you doing to live your love story with your spouse and children?

The 24th anniversary of The Family: A Proclamation to the World is at the end of this month. Every day until then I will be reposting articles from The Family Proclamation Celebration that has been held on my blog starting in 2010. This one was originally published in 2012.