To Have Peace and Happiness (Sept 12, 2010)

If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Watch it here.

Elder Scott’s talk ran the gambit on achieving happiness in courtship and in marriage. He offered a lot of specific counsel, and even interviewed a young married couple, asking them a few questions about their marriage. My favorite was when he talked extensively about his marriage with his late wife Jeanine (and when he says the word “Stupid!” 3 times in the talk.)

Here are some of my favorite quotes and thoughts on them:

“It’s alright to go to the movies after you’re married but it’s stupid to do it beforehand!”

AMEN! I’m so glad a General Authority said it. In fact, I don’t even think it’s the best date activity do with your spouse. Movies can be enjoyable, and it’s fun to watch them, but if it doesn’t lead to a discussion about the movie together, or some sort of time when you can actually look at each other and talk to each other, you might as well be at home shutting your brains of together like zombies to the TV.

I think there are a few circumstances in the dating world where watching a movie is acceptable:

• It’s a movie the both of you like and want to see together (it’s creating a shared experience that you’ll talk about later too)
• It’s an *awful* date, conversation is more than awkward and you want something to take you away from having to talk to each other.
• The movie is your place of choice for making your move so you can hold hands and start making out in the theater like teenagers.

This is a quote directed to the men, but I think in many ways can be equally applied to women:

“Young men, don’t waste time in idle pursuits. Serve a worthy mission, then make your highest priority that of finding a worthy eternal companion. Get on with life and work at it. Don’t just coast through this period of life, it goes by too rapidly. When you find you’re developing a strong interest in a young woman, show her that you are an exceptional person and that she would find interesting to know better….Get to know each other. If you want to have a wonderful wife, you’ve got to be attractive to her.”

Instead of looking at this and saying “Yes! Men need to be doing more!” I wonder if sometimes we as women could find ways to better pull our weight on our side of the equation. We could read: “When you find you’re developing a strong interest in a guy, show him that you are an exceptional person…. get to know each other… If you want to have a wonderful husband, you’ve got to be attractive to him.”

It is our job to make ourselves not only available to the men, but also to live in such a way that we can catch their interest so that they can explore our value as an eternal companion. I’d like to add here that it includes learning how to be physically attractive. But we’ll explore that in another post.

“Marriage enables you to really find out who you are. It provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self centered. I think one of the reasons that you are counseled to get married early in life is so that you won’t develop inappropriate character traits that are hard to change.”

It’s true. The longer we go without involving someone intimately in our life, the harder it is to learn to give up our wants for the happiness of our partner and the relationship. It becomes more unnatural to do those selfless acts a successful partnership requires.

“I know what it is to love a daughter of Father in Heaven who with grace and devotion lived the full, feminine splendor of her righteous womanhood.”

I particularly loved the usage of the words feminine and womanhood. In this world of feministic ideals, I think we woud all do well to explore the blessings we can bring to a family through fulfilling our roles in the way only women can.

“Some of you may feel lonely and unappreciated and cannot see how it would be possible for you to have the blessing of marriage and children or your own family. All things are possible to the Lord… Eternity is a long time. Have faith in the promises and live to be worthy of them so that in his time, the Lord can make them come true in your life.”

What were your thoughts?