Marriage and Zion

Most of you have already heard this, but I felt the need to record it in a more permanent way. As it were.

As I was driving down to Arizona to visit my uncle and aunt-- goodness, nearly two weeks ago-- I had a unique opportunity to just ponder on stuff. During the first part of the drive, I had a friend with me, helping me do the driving. She wanted, not unpredictably, to talk about boys. I've gotten fairly close-lipped about who I like (partly because so far none of those persons have ever worked out as a spouse), but I was happy to talk about the very nice boy my best friend took up with last summer, and whom she may well be marrying sometime next spring.

I also thought about my other best friend, who, nine years ago, married someone who is similarly (to the boyfriend I just mentioned) extraordinarily kind and good to her. I thought about what my mother and sisters have said about how important it is to make friends with your spouse before you marry, and how even more important it is to build that friendship after you marry. I mulled over a conversation I had had with my sister just before I left. I noticed to her that both of my best friends have chosen/are choosing people who are considerably different from what they had originally envisioned for themselves; people who seem, well, more boring than they had thought they wanted. (NOTE: both of these men are anything but boring, conversation-wise. They are intelligent, and they can speak Spanish and program computers and play trumpet-- they aren't really boring. But they are also not Mr. Rochester (the inscrutable, dashing hero from Jane Eyre) or, even better, Jack Wickham.) I said to her that maybe, since I think of both of my best friends as being more exciting than me, I will end up marrying someone more exciting than I had expected. She looked at me and said, "Most women marry someone less exciting than they had expected, and it's a good thing. The things the media portrays as exciting, which we are trained to see as attractive, are really things which make a person a bad spouse. Traits which are seen as boring-- things like steadiness, kindness, and the ability to hold down a good job-- are the things which make a person a good spouse."

So I was pondering on all that. And all of a sudden, as I pondered, I could perceive how sex fit in to marriage-- as a component, an essential one, but just a component of something that is both larger and more important than itself. That moment was like when your neck is out and somehow it pops in again. It was that satisfying. I am leaving things out here, but it was a kind of personal conversation, being with myself and all, so that is all I'm going to say about that part of it.

Anyway, the next day I was driving completely by myself, and thinking about this again, and this time I set in on the next problem, which is: if marriage isn't about sex, then what is it about?

It can't be about having and raising children, because some couples never do have and raise children, and their marriages are still valid, and still somehow do whatever it is that marriages are supposed to do, though in a different way than most do. Beyond that, it should be fairly obvious to most of us that some people are blessed with children, but treat them so badly that the essential purpose of parenting, and therefore (somehow) at least some of the essential purpose of marriage, has failed in these cases.

Could it be that married people are to help each other become better people? I think that this isn't far off the mark, but "better people" is so vague that it seems unhelpful.

We get married so that we can seek for Heavenly Father together.

That is what I believe is true.

I have to say that during the past year, maybe longer, I had started feeling weary of all the talk about getting married. I do want to get married, and I believe that it has many glorious benefits, but I had started tuning out talks about how important it was, because it just brought up painful feelings: it certainly isn't for lack of thinking it's important that I have not married yet.

However, this most recent insight helped me turn a corner. I no longer see marriage as a tantalizing prize which I do not personally hold the key to, but which everyone keeps telling me to try to get. Instead, I see it as a glorious, eternal principle. I see that it is like and runs parallel to my own personal quest for exaltation.

It is also like the principle of Zion, a society of people who are pure of heart, and there are not poor among them, and you are never given so much information that you can't apply what you know, but you are always aware that there is more information out there about how to make this society better. I do not a remember a time when the idea of Zion did not stir up an odd, excited, tingly feeling in my soul, a longing for a home that I do not remember. Marriage is not quite up to that yet, for me, but I am now curious to learn about it; to learn what the prophets, ancient and modern, have counseled and taught about this glorious principle.

One other, extremely nice side effect of all this realization is that I now have a much clearer idea of what I am looking for in a spouse. I need a person who wants to seek Heavenly Father's presence, along with me. This does not mean that we have to have the exact, exact same goals, or that we are just alike in personality or other ways. It just means that we can get along well enough, and like each other well enough, that we can work towards this, most important goal in a marriage, together.

I'm tired enough that my eyes are swimming. Here's hoping that this one's readable.