The Mom, Wife, Dream Life

When people tell you love is complicated. I don’t think they realize how accurate that can be at times. Love itself is not complicated, but the actions, words, and actual experiences revolving around love can be complicated.

Being a wife has taught me so much about love. Love can mean so much, love can be easy, love can be hard, but love, most of all, is rewarding and miraculous. Before Ethan and I were married, I thought I understood what love meant. For the most part, sure, I understood that when you love someone, that meant you would care about them, you’d ask them how they were, how their day was going, and you’d honestly do things for them without being asked. What I didn’t understand was the depth of love and how deeply it can truly fasten to your core. 

Why is Love So Important to Me? 

Love is what brought Ethan and me together, and love is what we rooted our relationship on. As we grew together, got to know each other more and more, our love began to flourish into a strict value, a moral, and an automatic response we have in our lives. When we are faced with opposition, hardship, and difficulty, our first thought, feeling, and action is to love. If not the hardship, then our Savior, our Heavenly Father, each other, our children, ourselves, and the ability we will have to make choices for ourselves. We choose to love when our minds are filled with worry, anxiety, and negative thoughts. It’s not easy, but choosing to love makes all the difference. Getting married was a great testament to me that love goes beyond those jittery feelings you get when he/she look at you. Love goes deeper than the first kiss, the first time he/she held your hand, or the way his/her arms wrap around you in an embrace. Love fights harder than anything when two people care deeply for one another and want what’s best for themselves and each other. 

So yes, love is complicated, because how do you explain those deep connecting emotions and feelings you get to someone who is just learning how to love another person or love themselves? I was always taught that if you truly, deeply, completely love or are in love with someone, that means you would do anything for that person. I do agree with that, but I also believe there is so much more to it. As you would probably agree, love is beautiful, love is special, and most importantly, love is to be cherished and nurtured. Love cannot grow or expand if it is not properly taken care of. That goes with anything. A plant cannot grow without proper soil, sunlight, water, and care. A child cannot grow without food, water, hygiene, and nurturing. Love cannot grow without patience, honesty, and compassion.

How is Patience and Love Connected?

Patience in love and patience in marriage have and probably always will be something to practice. It’s not simple all the time, and it’s not the same every time either. Patience takes work, and it takes, well, patience to be patient. There have been times in our marriage when I’ve wanted to jump to conclusions, jump to assumptions, and jump to quick resolutions, but if I did, they never helped the situation. I had to learn and still have to learn to be patient when those times and situations happen in our marriage and our lives. I want the easy answer, the quick fix, and the pain or hurt to immediately go away. Sadly, that’s not the way the world works, and that’s not the way our bodies are designed. Our bodies are beautiful and meticulous. They were not designed to get rid of or erase emotions and feelings, especially not immediately. We are supposed to learn, with patience, and actively work towards or practice improving those feelings, those emotions, actions, and hardships in our lives. We are meant to work together with our loved ones, especially our partners, our spouses, and our companions. We are not meant to walk the world alone, or if we were, we wouldn’t be able to grow and increase the kingdom of God on earth.

Have I Learned the Importance of Love? 

I can’t put it better than this, “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” (Genesis 2:18) We are meant to be together, we are suppose to have trials, hardships, pain and sufferings. It’s for the benefit that we will learn and become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ, and more knowledgeable of the world and the capabilities we all have to become better human beings. In every relationship, there needs to be honesty. No matter what, honesty is pivotal in maintaining and keeping a healthy relationship. If you expect to get honesty from your partner or spouse, then you’d best be honest with them too. Even if it hurts, sometimes honesty is the only way you can fully learn to heal. Here is an example in our marriage where honesty played an important role in shaping our relationship with one another.

We had individual lives before one another. We had different ways of living, different life experiences, other relationships, etc. What we didn’t know about each other were the details that helped shape us into who we were when we met. We didn’t know the extent the other had gone to get to where they were, or how hard the other worked to become a better person than they were previously. For instance, one of us was struggling with past sins, and the other was struggling with trust. I won’t be specific on who struggled with what, but it got to the point where we both sat down with each other (before we got married, heck, before we were even engaged) and we had an intimate conversation about what we were both struggling with. We were honest, even if we didn’t know what was going to happen to our relationship. We knew we wanted to be together, and we knew we wanted to be better for ourselves and each other. We knew that no matter what, we would work hard for one another, we would fight for our relationship, and for our love. We didn’t know the other felt this way, though, until we had this conversation. Ethan believed I was going to break up with him because of this, and I believed he wanted to break up with me because of what I shared. I told him no, and that I still wanted to be with him, I told him that I loved him, I reminded him that we were both human, both struggling with things, but that we could work through them with the help and support from one another if that is what he wanted too. He said he did, we hugged, and promised from that point on to be honest with one another, and that we were both in this to grow, to learn, and to become the best partners we could be for the other.

How has Honesty Helped our Marriage?

Honesty is not always easy as pie, but it will be worth it, no matter the consequence, either good or bad. I would rather be honest and have a bad consequence knowing I kept to my values and honored God than to lie and have a good consequence with a guilty conscience. My values and the love I have for God, my husband, and myself are not worth the lie of hoping I get away with it. Honesty is the key to a happy and healthy relationship; it’s the only true way you can learn to trust each other.

With honesty comes compassion. As mentioned in the example above, Ethan and I felt compassion towards one another as we were open and honest. We felt love for one another even though we were hurting. We chose to hug and forgive because what is a relationship if we can’t learn to let go and move on? Our marriage has a strong focus on forgiveness and compassion because, without compassion, which is sympathy and concern for others, we cannot forgive. We as a couple, as a marriage, must learn to sympathize with one another even if we don’t quite understand. Just because we don’t always understand does not mean that we can’t have sympathy or love towards the other. Love comes full circle as we remember that we are both human, we both have flaws, weaknesses, and trials. But we also both have strengths, purpose, and the opportunity to learn and grow. When we choose to love, we are open to the choice to find patience, to seek and provide honesty, and to have compassion towards one another. Love encompasses all things that are good when we choose to let it. 

What Have I Learned in Marriage?

Being a wife has taught me that love is complicated, love is hard, and love is deep. These are not bad things! Love is not meant to be easy; it’s meant to try us, strengthen us, and create eternal bonds with each other. My marriage is not perfect, but my marriage is full of love, full of practicing patience, full of honesty, and full of compassion. What have you learned in your relationships about love?

“Marriage is a gift from God to us; The quality of our marriages is a gift from us to Him.”

McKenna Sanders

The Mom, Wife, Dream Life Blog

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