It is so interesting to me, when you meet someone new. You don’t know anything about them except for what you see; how they look and act and what comes up in conversation or whatever they decide to tell you. Everyone is so individual and separate from everyone else. However, family plays a huge role in this individualism that we all have.

When I first met my husband, I did not know anything about him, I just saw that he was tall and had dark hair, and he liked to have fun (and he did not mind attention). I observed that he was confident and kind and accepting. He is friends with everyone. As we got to know each other a bit better, I came to know that he is the fifth of nine children and he has several nieces and nephews and I connected these facts to what I observed about him being kind and accepting.

When I met my husband’s family, I connected more of the dots. His mother is a very confident women, as well as his father. And each of his siblings are all very, very different from each other. However, they are all confident in themselves and what they are doing with their lives and they each know which direction they are headed, and they are comfortable with that. There is no stress in their home, they are all friends and they are all accepting of each other’s personalities, goals, and lifestyles. His dad likes to tease, as does my husband and he likes to have fun as well.

My husband is different from his brothers and his dad but much of who he is came from watching their examples. So much of who we are is made up from where we came from. For example, we all have the light of Christ within us when we are born, meaning we know deep down in our gut what is right from what is wrong.

"…each marriage starts with two built-in handicaps. It involves two imperfect people. Happiness can come to them only through their earnest effort. Just as harmony comes from an orchestra only when its members make a concentrated effort, so harmony in marriage also requires a concerted effort. That effort will succeed in each partner will minimize personal demands and maximize actions of loving selflessness."     
 - President Russell M. Nelson

When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we often got caught up, along with my mother, with the little things such as what the invitation looked like and what song we were going to dance to. We were planning our wedding, not our marriage. That is the difference.

However, looking back, I think that we were unknowingly planning our marriage as well. At least a little bit. As we planned our wedding, we had to problem solve. We were planning our wedding from three different states. I was in Utah, my husband was in Colorado, and my mother was in California, where the wedding would be held. While on facetime for most of our discussion, we had to make essential decisions, solve necessary problems, and come to agree on pretty much everything so that the actual wedding day would go smoothly.

This time period was difficult, being away from each other and trying to agree on things and planning the most important day of our lives. We learned how to better communicate with each other so that each of these conversations went well (the majority of them went great), and so that we could continue to check things off of our list of to-dos.

Transitioning into marriage has been great. We love each other’s families and it is fun to get to know each other’s families better and see where we get our little quirks and strong opinions and stubbornness, weird laughs, and more.



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