Marriage is AWESOME!

Right now I’m working in an elementary school in the mornings for my dissertation. I’m teaching college in the afternoon to try (and not succeed that well) to pay for my degree. And I work with the young women (12-18 year-olds) at church in the evenings and on weekends. Plus, you know, the rest of life.

A few weeks ago I left on a Friday morning to go out and do my thing and as I was walking out the door I turned to Brett and said, “I feel like I’m forgetting something. It’s probably because I’m not taking my computer with me today.” And then I continued out the door, got in the car, and drove off. Halfway to the elementary school I realized what I had forgotten – everything I needed for the elementary school that morning. Turned around, drove faster than I should to get home, ran into the house and grabbed my stuff, as I was running back to the car Brett asked if I’d forgotten something and I called out, “Everything!” and then drove faster than I should and got to the elementary school with one minute to spare.

As I left the elementary school much calmer an hour later I realized that I could have, and did, run around like that when I was single. But there was something about doing it that morning with Brett there that somehow made it easier. When I emailed Brett my thoughts on the matter and explain why his wife had been tearing through the house that morning after he’d already kissed her good-bye he said, “I’m glad me watching you run around like a headless chicken is all the support you need :-)”

I could, and did, live life single for many years. I had a career I was good at while single. I got one graduate degree and started another while single. I expanded my talents while single (belly dancing, theater). I traveled while single. I moved states while single. I got by just fine. There are some who might say I didn’t “need” a man. And on one level that might be true. But on a deeper level it couldn’t be further from the truth. I enjoyed my single life, but it wasn’t something to celebrate and throw a parade over. Marriage is what we need, what we celebrate and throw parades about. Because marriage is awesome. “Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children” (The Family: A Proclamation to the World).

Somehow, knowing Brett is there makes it easier for me to do what I need to do. He is not doing my research or teaching with me. I was doing those things just fine on my own. But there is something about being married that makes me more capable in what I’m doing. President Hinckley said, “In our old age my beloved companion said to me quietly one evening, ‘You have always given me wings to fly, and I have loved you for it'” (“The Women in Our Lives,” General Conference, October 2004).

This morning we both learned a new term – inosculation. Two separate trees grow all on their own. They are independent. They are individual. But at some point they grow so their branches touch. Over time the bark where they touch wears away and the cores of the branches meet. When that happens the two branches graft themselves to each other. Through that connection the one tree nourishes the other and helps support it while the other tree does the same in return. Based on that point of connection they are one organism. The two have become one.

I think maybe marriage is like that. We had two separate lives. But marriage has joined us in a way so that we take strength from each other. Maybe that’s why all the things I was doing before on my own are somehow easier now, why I can handle things now I wouldn’t have dreamed I could handle before. Through marriage we are one.

Photos from the day we met-met to Saturday.