Of Missions and Marriage

"A good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection." 

-Elder Dallin H Oaks

     I remember the day I decided to go on a mission, it was the summer of 2012 and I was sitting on my kitchen counter watching one of the Elders from our ward make bacon—we had a weekly tradition of having the missionaries over for breakfast every Saturday—while cooking, Elder Schumacher looked at me and said, “so when are you going on a mission?” and that was it. Two months later I was in the New York Rochester Mission, stoked out of my mind and absolutely clueless about how hard this whole journey was going to be. It was rough—hilariously, miserably, wonderfully difficult and I miss it every single day. As always God knew what I needed more than I did. About half way through my mission I was on exchanges in Buffalo, it was like every other exchange that I’d been on; new people, different part of the mission, different companion and new appointments; on my last night there we had one stop to make at a less actives house to share a short message and then head home, but when we got there the Elders had beaten us to it. In short the meeting would have been lack-luster and all in all forgettable, if I hadn’t been so annoyed with the Elder sitting next to me. This Elder said NOTHING the entire time, almost refusing to help us teach this less active and her family, and seemed to me to reek of arrogance. Elder Stoddard had quickly become my least favorite Elder in the mission.

Fast forward two transfers, one mission president, and two companions later we got transfer calls and none other than THE Elder Stoddard was coming to join the area. I was less than thrilled. Over the course of that transfer though, I learned that he wasn’t the arrogant, self-important, pretty-boy I’d pegged him as; he was actually just shy, slightly socially awkward and humble as could be. I grew to respect him as a missionary and then as a friend just around the time I was being transferred out of the area. I only saw him a handful of times after that before returning home in December of 2013; but to my surprise he wrote. Every week after coming home I got a letter and an email, every week until he got home July 3, 2014—seven months after me. He flew out to see me one week after getting home, we were engaged by August and married on October 18, 2014.

We've only been married for six months now have had our fair share of trials already, marriage is hard, harder than my mission and I thought my mission was actually going to kill me! But seriously. Every day takes effort, effort to communicate, to serve, to show love, to show respect, to work together, to take care of one another, to comfort, cheer on and move forward, and honestly sometimes it’s scary.

"There are many good Church members who have been divorced. I speak first to them. We know that many of you are innocent victims—members whose former spouses persistently betrayed sacred covenants or abandoned or refused to perform marriage responsibilities for an extended period. Members who have experienced such abuse have firsthand knowledge of circumstances worse than divorce. When a marriage is dead and beyond hope of resuscitation, it is needful to have a means to end it."

 -Dallin H. Oaks (Divorce, May 2007)

My parents divorced when I was 7 so I always seem to wonder if I’ll ever push my husband that far, that he won’t want to work at it anymore, that he’ll grow tired of the trials we share and lose the desire to move forward with me, but what gives me great hope is the message of the gospel and our common desire to keep our covenants. After my parents’ divorce our family was very broken and it took years for us to heal, but that healing wouldn’t have been possible without the assistance of a loving Savior. As with all wounds many of us still have scars in the forms of fears about marriage, of being left behind, of pushing people away and of not finding happiness on our own. In my very short six months of marriage those scars are starting to fade and I can feel those wounds left from my parents’ divorce starting to disappear. In the April 2012 General Conference Henry B Eyring stated, “It is the will of the Lord to strengthen and preserve the family unit. We plead with fathers to take their rightful place as the head of the house. We ask mothers to sustain and support their husbands and to be lights to their children.” I love this quote because I know it is true, I have seen it in my own life; that when fathers and mothers come together to uphold the sacred callings that God has given them and work together to provide a home where the spirit can dwell the Lord blesses and strengthens them. We are a covenant making and keeping people and with those covenants come promised blessings and heavenly aid in our times of distress and heartache.