The problem with honesty

If movie, television and books are to be believed, honesty is the most important aspect of any relationship. I certainly thought it was when I got married. People ought to be honest with one another. In our more recent culture, that has been changed to brutally, cruelly honest. In our current estimation of virtue, it seems that we value truth over kindness, compassion and love. I, therefore, found it a bit of an adjustment to find myself in love with a man who didn’t like to share.

At the time, I was quite insecure. I didn’t think I was beautiful or thin enough to be what a man truly wanted and I was worried that soon after getting married, my husband would realize that he could have done better. I had observed the dynamic in several other couples. I knew that it was normal for a man to admit his wife’s faults or even talk about his attraction to other women in front of her. These things, after all, constitute honesty, which is to be valued over all. 

My husband was never honest with me, as I saw it. If we were watching a movie together and I pointed out how beautiful the actress was, he would scoff and make comments such as, “What are you talking about, she looks nothing like you.” I found it endearing, but also frustrating. I knew he was lying to me and that bothered me.

Fourteen years later, I have realized that my husband’s constant insistence that I was perfect, was the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. You see, what he really gave me was the gift of being unsure. He tells me that my rounded curves and extra padding make up, “the most beautiful body in the world.” He tells me I don’t need make up and my hair is gorgeous in a ponytail. He tells me I am as lovely as the day he met me and he adores me more now than then. He tells me every other woman pales in comparison and he will never be worthy of me. Is he truly so deluded? I DON’T KNOW. When I was young, I was certain he was lying out of love for me. But years and years of hearing something can leave you wondering whether or not it’s actually true.

The greatest gift my husband ever gave me was to make it so that I don’t know whether or not he is being honest. Because somewhere in my heart there’s a part of me that whispers, “Maybe he’s telling the truth.” Why is that uncertainly so important? Because the young woman I was at the beginning of this marriage had no idea it was possible to be loved like that. I do.

Miracles are Far from Rare

 

I pray for my children constantly. They are my whole world and I am desperately struggling to make the decisions that will set them up for happiness throughout life. But once in a while I find myself facing a problem that I simply have no idea how to solve and all the googling in the world doesn't seem to help. Yesterday, I found myself in such a situation. One of my kids is going through a trial and I had no clue how to make it better. Where the internet failed, I turned to my Heavenly Father. I poured my heart out to him and asked for help.

This morning I hauled myself out of bed and wandered out to the elliptical machine. My ipad was perched on top, where it has been for days. You see, that thing has a herculean battery. I use it to read as I exercise (clearly not very well) and if I leave it there, it will only lose a couple percentages a day in battery life. It was in the eighties yesterday. This morning, it was completely dead. I couldn't possibly ride that silly machine for twenty minutes without a book, so I irritably wandered upstairs to the library.

When we moved into this house, the old owners left a few books behind. I love books. I collect them and have since I was in junior high school. The library had plenty of room, so I never bothered to even go through the books to see if any of them were worth reading. I haven't had much time for reading lately. As I perused the collection, my eye fell on a book I had never noticed before, one left behind by the old owners. It said something about left-brained kids. At that moment, I heard one of the kids walking up the stairs and realized that I had to hurry if I was going to exercise before it was time to get them out the door to school. I grabbed the book and rushed downstairs.

I spent a few minutes programming the elliptical and getting into a rhythm, and then opened the book to the "forward." It was a description of the author going through a struggle with her son. Immediately, phrases started jumping off the page as each sentence contained the very keywords I had been searching on the internet. My breathing sped up as my movement on the elliptical slowed down. I felt tears forming in my eyes that I immediately wiped away so I could see the pages. I never finished my twenty minutes exercising. I sat on the floor and read my story through the eyes of a different mother.

One thing you have to understand about miracles is that they are never immediate. My child's struggle isn't going to go away because I read a book. No, the real miracle here isn't that I now have a magical formula to fix every problem in our home. The miracle is that Heavenly Father heard my prayer and took the time to speak back. Do you know what he said? He told me, "I love you. I hear you. And I want you to know that I love that child as much as you do. We'll help him together."

And miracles like that happen ALL the time.

One For Me

I recently went through a trial. It doesn’t matter what it was. The thing is that I knew for some time before the actual events that it was a possibility. I knew that it might happen and I knew how it would make me feel. At least, I thought I did. 

Anticipation of a negative event is a funny thing. It gives us the opportunity to prepare ourselves and to decide exactly how our heart and head will react. Then, if the trial never actually comes, we can feel a sense of accomplishment because we lived it vicariously and know that we would have handled it very well.  Most of my life has been lived in this world of anticipation and avoidance of trials. I have cried real tears for mothers who have lost children, sat up late at night feeling sick over injustices read about on the news, and wrote bold words of empathy and comfort to friends who have dealt with tragedies that I have only ever experienced in my mind. 

I stand, constantly, in a torrent of difficult trials, like a tornado tearing up the Earth around me. I am in the eye, where it is quiet and calm. But for one day, I was forced out of my comfort zone and the torrent sucked me inside. 

It’s not the events that matter, but my reaction. You see, I did not react as I had planned to. I did not feel what I had known I would. I did not muster the grace or class or control that I had anticipated and planned for. I found my heart unexpectedly broken, my impeccable sense of logic completely MIA, and my strength sapped. 

But I learned something. For the first time in my life, I think I finally know why the atonement of Christ was necessary. It’s never really made sense before. I watched all of the seminary videos about justice and mercy. I still didn’t understand. I assumed there was some greater natural law that I couldn’t comprehend which necessitated Christ’s sacrifice in exchange for our redemption. The heartlessly cruel requirement that an innocent Savior suffer for someone else’s crime did not square at all with my perception of a loving, nurturing Father. 

I have never been one to pray for trials.  It’s been my assessment that I can know a fire’s heat without feeling it burn. But this past week I realized that my world view is wrong. Without the actual experience, I can know that a burn is painful, but not what it feels like. It turns out that those are two very different things.

Having my heart broken taught me that I cannot even begin to anticipate the pain of life’s trials, that I don’t understand what another person is feeling just because I can imagine having to face a similar situation, and that I am not nearly as kind of a person as I should be. It also taught me that the Atonement of Jesus Christ may have served a purpose in meeting the demands of justice. But, the purpose I need to understand better is the one it served in qualifying our Savior to be our advocate with the Father. 

We live in a cruel world. The tendency to criticize is strong and seductive. But I am beginning to learn that kindness and compassion are probably the most powerful forces on Earth. 

I am still not ready to pray for trials. But I am writing these feelings down today in hopes that when I am securely back in the calm, quiet eye of the storm, I will not forget how little I know about the trials around me. 

As the primary song says, “I want to be kind to everyone; for that is right, you see.” I want to be kind to those who I disagree with, to those who make bad decisions, to those who don't like me, and to those who I think are cruel. I'm going to need a lot of help getting there, but I'm starting to understand where I can find it.

They're Lying to You!

Essays on Love-Volume 2

Or

Marriage is awesome, you should try it.

Or

A note to single people who are too scared to make a commitment

Since this blog is for the stated purpose of exposing lies, I thought it was time for me to expose the greatest conspiracy known to mankind. It’s a lie you’ve been told your whole life. It’s a lie that is accepted as truth in almost every kind of media and our daily conversations. It is a sick, sad lie that, like most lies, can become true if we believe it. It’s a lie that I once believed with my whole heart because it was so ubiquitous in our culture.  In fact, I don’t know that there has ever been a more destructive lie told through the history of time.  

Here are some examples of places it has appeared:

“Ain't much difference between kidnapping and marriage. You get snatched from your parents. But in marriage, nobody offers a reward.”

The Bride Came C.O.D. (1941)

“Marriage is like an institution. So is Alcatraz"

Look Who's Laughing

"Love...a dangerous disease instantly cured by marriage."

Law & Order (1990)

"No one should ever expect happiness from marriage. A few quiet moments, perhaps, if one is lucky...and an occasional day that doesn't incite you to murder."

Clothes in the Wardrobe (1993)

"Ever since we said 'I do', there are so many things we don't."

I Love Lucy (1951)

Shall I go on? By the time I made it to eighteen, I was absolutely certain of a few different things when it came to marriage. I was sure that men were incapable of being faithful in their hearts, even if they technically managed it. I was sure that romance disappeared quickly after vows were made. I was sure that unhappiness was inevitable and had to be worked through. I had been so exposed to the lie that marriage is a nearly-impossible sacrifice that I was scared to death of it. It wasn’t just the TV that convinced me of this. Well meaning people love to tell you that fairytale endings don’t exist, that marriage is hard work, and that the happiness you find in being married is an eventuality, not for the here and now. Just last year, all my friends were passing around a deep and meaningful blog about how “Marriage isn’t for you.” It’s for your spouse and your children. Fortunately, by that time, I understood the lie.

When I met my husband, I was kind of horrible to him. I was convinced that men were cruel, selfish, and all about the moment. Although I believed him when he said he loved me, I also knew, as society had taught me, that love couldn’t make it past marriage. It is almost unbelievable that I was so cynical considering that I was surrounded by happily married couples, including my parents.  But the media is a very powerful tool and I was sure that happiness was not a fairytale, but a complacence. 

I broke up with Nathan every week or so. I flat out refused him when he brought up marriage. I loved his kindness, gloried in his compliments, and passionately adored him more, the more I learned about him. But I could not marry him. In fact, Heavenly Father had to hit me over the head with a proverbial brick of revelation to get me to accept his proposals. Even then, when I knew that it was the right thing to do, I didn’t want to. Determined to be found accepting of the Lord’s will, I decided to jump into the marriage with both feet. I did so, and landed…

                                                                                     …in the fairytale.  

My husband was/is loving, attentive, supportive and faithful. He made me feel beautiful every day. He appreciated my talents. He supported me through my disappointments. He made, and makes, me happy. I was twenty-one when I married Nathan. I’m thirty-four now. Fourteen years isn’t that long compared to eternity. It isn’t even that long compared to the marriages of some of the people around me. But it is long enough to convince me that everything I knew about marriage was wrong. Let me share just a few truths I’ve learned since becoming a Mrs. 

Is marriage hard?

No. Life is hard, and if you're married, then that is part of life. But life without marriage is much harder. I discovered this on my honeymoon and have never looked back. I was shocked by the feelings of contentment that came with commitment. All of the stress melted away and our relationship got much better, not worse as TV would have you believe, with commitment. I promised Nate on that honeymoon that I would never even bring up divorce, it just wasn't an option. But that whole conversation was unnecessary. I have never even thought about divorce. I get so frustrated with people saying that they "want to finish college first." Sometimes there is something else in their lives that they need to get through. It's stupid. College, indeed all challenges we face, are so much better within a loving marriage.

Are all men unfaithful?

No. When I was first married, I doubted my husband’s insistence that no one was as beautiful as I was. I thought he was lying to me when he told me that this or that actress with the perfect body could never compare to me. In the years since then, I’ve realized that we don’t all embrace the world’s idea of physical beauty. If you love someone, really love someone, your perception of beauty changes to match the reality of the person you love. I am far from the perfect physical specimen but I have come to believe that he sees perfection when he looks at me, as I see it when I look at him. There is such thing as a man who is faithful, even in his heart.   

Does arguing with one another mean you are unhappy?

No. Honestly, I think the only couple that doesn’t argue is one where one spouse is so much smarter than the other that he/she defers automatically. This seems absolutely miserable in my mind. Who wants to be married to someone who isn’t their equal? My husband and I disagree all the time. We expand each other, enlighten each other and challenge each other. Sometimes we get angry. Sometimes I want to bite his face. But happiness does not require complete harmony. It only requires that the preponderance of the time be uplifting. 

Does getting married mean an end to romance?

No. And the rest is none of your business. :-)

Is every marriage happy?

No. At least, I assume not. But I still maintain that the lies about marriage perpetuated by our culture are lies. Unfortunately those lies have had the effect of self-fulfilling prophesy for some people, twisting marriage into something that it isn't. Men are told that they aren't supposed to be faithful, so they're not. Women are told that they are supposed to be unhappy, so they are. It's as cunning an evil plan as could be perpetrated on what is, and always has been, the key to true happiness. The truth is that the condition of a marriage is what people believe it to be. So, waiting and fearing it sets you up for failure. That is why people who live together first are so much more likely to divorce. They were unwilling to commit in the first place. 

Is Marriage a trial for us to get through?

Yes, but only in the same sense that having money is a trial. It comes with its own challenges and lessons that we must work through to find true happiness. Still, on the whole, I’d rather have that trial than live without it. 

If it’s so wonderful, why do so many people divorce?

I'm not the one to answer this. I know that I have limited experience and I respect that others have gone through challenges I have not. But, I think this often has to do with expectations. Most people don’t go into a marriage not knowing the person they are marrying, despite what we’ve been told. A fair number of us go into a marriage expecting that the failings we see in our beloved will change after we’ve married them. “I hate that he won’t go to church with me, but he’ll change when he sees how much it means to me.” Except that he thinks you’ll stop nagging him because you love him. Never expect marriage to change someone. Marry them because the qualities you love in them are more important than the things you would like to change. Then focus on the good. If there is something about them you absolutely cannot live with, they are not the right one.

I am not an expert in anything. I have absolute sympathy for those who have dealt with the trials of infidelity, abuse and heartbreak. But the truth is that these situations are the exception, not the rule. The truth is that there is absolutely nothing in this life that can bring more joy, satisfaction, self-esteem and contentment than being married to your best friend. The truth is that the trials we will inevitably face are easier when you have someone facing them with you. The truth is that the only way to glimpse heaven is through the love that you share within a family unit. The truth is that making marriage into something to be feared, rather than anticipated, is a big part Satan’s clever plan to make  you miserable. 

But you don’t have to believe me…

“My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.”

-Winston Churchill

“My husband and I are best of friends first and foremost. We fight like cats and dogs, but never stay mad for long. I was lucky to find him, he is in every way, my soulmate.”

-Carnie Wilson

“Happiness is only real when shared."                                                            

-Jon Krakauer  

                                                       

"Making you happy makes me happy, and that's not hard because you're a happy person."

-My husband

“I love this beautiful  woman. Here's to another 41 years together.”

-My Dad

"I am grateful to be able to say that in our long life together I cannot remember a serious quarrel. Small differences occasionally, yes, but nothing of a serious nature. I believe our marriage has been as idyllic as anyone’s could possibly be.

"I recognize that many of you are similarly blessed, and I compliment you most warmly, for when all is said and done there is no association richer than the companionship of husband and wife, and nothing more portentous for good or evil than the unending consequences of marriage."

-Gordon B. Hinckley