Wall Street Journal..."Did I Get Married Too Soon"?

December 16th 1977

November 2009

I was 19 (almost 20), Bob was 21 and recently home from his mission when we got married. We knew each other in High School...sort of. He had a girlfriend (that would be you Judy) and I was two years younger and didn't really run in his circle. It was April of 1977 and I had just gotten home from a year at BYU when I saw him at a dance festival. We technically met for the first

time, we dated, we broke up (actually he dumped me) and then we got back together (three days later he regretted dumping me). Our first date was the first of June, we were engaged by October and married by December. There is a love story between these lines but that is not why I am writing this entry. Bob received an article in the Wall Street Journal written by a staff member at Institute for American Values entitled "Did I Get Married Too Soon?" To both pro and con advocates I will be really honest. There were times I thought I had. I loved Bob and wanted to marry him so I did. I had a Hollywood idea of what marriage would be like and found out that it is much easier create a love story in an 1 1/2 hours on a movie screen then to create one in real life. Only one night at the movies and you have wives all over

the world saying to their husbands..."Why aren't you more like Edward!!!" I haven't read the books or seen the movies but I associate with enough young women and grown women alike to know it has had a damaging impact on their idea of what love really is. Vampires....really? I once heard a women lecturing on this subject. She was trying to help detox her daughter from the effects of the movie "Titanic". I remember one of my daughters (it was Kendra and her friend Katy Slade) coming home with her friend, both being in tears over the death of Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. Kate and Leonardo...now they had a real love story. She then went on to say, "It's a good thing that boy died because the minute he hit shore he would have been gone." I laughed at her brutal honesty on the subject. My biggest problem in getting married so young was that I was immature.I dove head first into a world where I had to be selfless, loyal, hard working, careful with money, careful with words. The list goes on and on.

What I know now that I didn't know then is that I made the right choice...for me. What I could not see then, I see so clearly now. I saw it this week when I went to lunch with a young friend of mine that has been married only 9 months. The transformation is taking place in her and she is beautiful. How do you best teach a young woman service. Place her newborn child in her arms.

(Jessica as a baby. I don't remember everything being so orange and that I have no pictures of her and I when she was a newborn baby!)

How do you teach a young woman selflessness? Support a husband through the countless hours of school and/or work. Even sweeter is if he knows he is coming home to a wife that greets him with an understanding spirit and a warmed up plate of dinner. How do you teach a young woman about order and clean. Let her experience the chaos of a dirty home and piled up laundry. She learns quickly the virtue of hard work and sees the spirit of peace in her home when she creates a house of order. I was so busy developing these skills out of necessity (usually due to a lack of funds), that I didn't notice the incremental growth along the way. I did not have the wisdom at 19 to know this but at 52 it is as clear as day.

I told my husband on our date last night that I came up with the perfect analogy for this article. I was told once that the best way to get through your day was to start with the challenging things first so that your evenings are peaceful. It is true of marriage and family. Start while you are young and fresh and full of energy. Grow and stretch through your eternal progression. Rid yourself of all the human tendencies that make you miserable. Life will never be without it's challenges, old or young, but my life is more peaceful now. I am content and love sharing the "evenings" with my husband. It is so much sweeter than I had anticipated. So here's to 32 years and growing up together.