A Mother's Young Heart

I came across this article and started to feel grateful for what my mother had given ever since I was born in this world. The article was entitled, Comfort from my Mother's Journal.

After I had suffered with poor health for several years, my condition worsened. Although I had been promised in a priesthood blessing I would one day experience a cure, my doctor thought it unlikely. Certainly it would not be soon. A black cloud of discouragement settled over my heart, and my painful burden seemed unbearable despite the support of my loving family.

After months of suffering, one day I recalled something that both my mother and grandmother had often said: “For tomorrow and its needs, I do not pray. Help me, guide me, direct me, Lord, just for today.” ¹ This phrase came to mind often and I repeated it frequently, finding a small measure of comfort in the words. But I still felt terribly alone in my struggles.

One quiet Sunday, while visiting my sister, I opened my mother’s journal and read in it for most of the day. I delighted in the remembrance of this loving, funny, caring woman I missed dearly. Near the end of the journal, I found a heartfelt account of her battle with cancer. During my mother’s long hours of suffering, she wrote that she could almost hear her deceased mother’s voice comforting her time and again: “For tomorrow and its needs I do not pray. Help me, guide me, direct me, Lord, just for today.”

I stared at the words, and suddenly my eyes were opened. I hadn’t been left to suffer alone and comfortless all these months. Whispering to my soul were kind, gentle words of comfort from my mother and grandmother. Tomorrow would take care of itself—no matter what was required of me today. The dark cloud over my heart dissipated in the light of love from my Heavenly Father, who knew the need of a daughter for her mother and sent me that comfort.

I give thanks often that my mother kept a journal in which she recorded the significant events of her life, for it became the instrument in the hands of the Master Healer to help me recognize the blessings of comfort extended to me, to heal my heavy heart, and to give me a measure of joy and the strength to face the future.

Laura Mackay is a member of the American Fork Eighth Ward, American Fork Utah Central Stake.

I hope that when my daughter came across my blogs, she will feel the same way and realized that everything I do is for her for our entire family. I love my daughter so much and I am so grateful that God entrusted me the goft of motherhood. Although there are some challenges and trials that come across my way, I know that God will never let me down, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

A Love That Lasts

Church doctrine teaches us how to nurture and strengthen marriages as well as how to keep the romance  -ELDER LYNN G. ROBBINS

Falling in love is a powerful thing. There have doubtless been more books written, more movies made, more songs sung about love and falling in love than about any other topic. Finding a person to love is the ultimate treasure hunt. Falling in love, one person reflected, is finding “someone just right, someone you loved like the best pal you ever had and the worst crush you ever had.” 1 It can be so consuming that the desire to be with another becomes unrelenting, occupying your every thought, your every desire, your every minute of the day. It’s intense. It’s exhilarating. To fully portray the feeling on paper has always been elusive to even the most adept poets. To comprehend it, love has to be experienced. And oh, what a wonderful experience! He captures her heart, she captures his; there is a mutual victory and surrendering for both.

“The Lord has ordained that we should marry,” said President Gordon B. Hinckley, “that we shall live together in love and peace and harmony. … The time will come when you will fall in love. It will occupy all of your thoughts and be the stuff of which your dreams are made. … You will know no greater happiness than that found in your home. … The truest mark of your success in life will be the quality of your marriage. … This choice [of a companion] will be the most important of all the choices you make in your life.”


A Love That Lasts

For some people, falling in love is a magical encounter, something that seems to happen at first sight. For others, it is a growing affinity and attraction toward another, like budding blossoms that flower into a beautiful bouquet. Though the first type of love may also bloom like the second, it is often merely glandular, a cotton candy kind of love that has no substance. While it may begin with warm cuddles in moonlit glades, it can soon grow cold as honeymoon memories fade and familiarity turns to faultfinding.

On the other hand, “divine” love, as President Spencer W. Kimball called it, “is not like that association of the world which is misnamed love, but which is mostly physical attraction. When marriage is based on this only, the parties soon tire of each other. There is a break and a divorce, and a new, fresher physical attraction comes with another marriage, which in turn may last only until it too becomes stale. The love of which the Lord speaks is not only physical attraction, but also faith, confidence, understanding, and partnership. It is devotion and companionship, parenthood, common ideals and standards. It is cleanliness of life and sacrifice and unselfishness. This kind of love never tires nor wanes. It lives on through sickness and sorrow, through prosperity and privation, through accomplishment and disappointment, through time and eternity.”

Too many believe that love is a condition, a feeling that involves 100 percent of the heart, something that happens to you. They disassociate love from the mind and, therefore, from agency. In commanding us to love, the Lord refers to something much deeper than romance—a love that is the most profound form of loyalty. He is teaching us that love is something more than feelings of the heart; it is also a covenant we keep with soul and mind.


Love by Decision

While it is obvious that agency is a factor in the character traits listed by the Apostle Paul, it will be impossible to develop these attributes without the Lord’s help. Therefore, the Lord instructs us through Mormon to “pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ” (Moro. 7:48).

This is the love that is to be applied in marriages, in families, and with our fellowmen. A marriage based on this kind of love becomes the most romantic of all, generating eternal tender feelings between a husband and a wife. It should also be obvious that the heartache leading to divorce can be caused by the negative traits identified in the chart. These traits should be eliminated from our lives and homes.

Thus we have seen that while a person may “fall in love” with a spouse by emotion, the husband or wife progresses and blossoms in love by decision.

It is almost humorous to observe a young unmarried couple in love. After spending an entire day together, they are back together again on the phone that same night. It’s sheer torture for them to be separated. Even in their thoughts they can hardly focus on anything else. Love begins to disrupt their studies or work. Everything else in life becomes a nuisance and an interruption that keeps them apart until they can be together again. In their minds there was never, in the history of the world, a truer love than theirs. We call this level of premarriage intensity “infatuation.”

Because love is as much a verb as it is a noun, the phrase “I love you” is much more a promise of behavior and commitment than it is an expression of feeling. “I love you” is a phrase we should be using in our homes much more than we do. If we don’t teach our children to use this phrase, they’ll be very uncomfortable with it throughout their lives and may not use it very much in their own marriage or with their own children. In my family, as we conclude our family prayer and scripture study in the morning, everyone gives one another a hug and each says, “I love you,” brothers to sisters, sisters to brothers, parents to children, and my wife and I to one another. It is a wonderful way to start the day and a good way to fulfill King Benjamin’s advice to teach our children to love (see Mosiah 4:15).

Scripturally, the Lord is very clear with us on this doctrine—you can’t “fall out of love,” because love is something you decide. Agency plays a fundamental role in our relationships with one another. This being true, we must make the conscious decision that we will love our spouse and family with all our heart, soul, and mind; that we will build, not “fall into,” strong, loving marriages and families. “Don’t just pray to marry the one you love. Instead, pray to love the one you marry.”

(source: lds.org)

The Process of Breaking Up

It feels good to invest in a relationship. To care. To want to share. To want to give.       -M. GAWAIN WELLS 

If your dating relationship feels joyous and healthy, if both of you feel the Lord’s approval of your decision to marry, then the relationship “works,” and you marry. If it doesn’t work, you don’t marry. There is no third alternative. 


However, many people assume there is a third alternative and try to keep the relationship alive when all signs of vitality have ceased. There are people who cannot accept breaking up as a healthy part of the selection process of courtship. Instead, they see it as a time to punish themselves, to feel hurt, or even to try to hurt others.

The Lord has given us some important guidelines for relationships—and they apply to all relationships, including dating. We’re counseled to treat all people charitably and kindly, to forgive, and to love not only God and others but also ourselves.

By developing and exercising compassion, a person can—without unpleasantness or emotional devastation—end a dating relationship that needs to end, and turn the experience into an important step toward developing another relationship that does result in marriage.

Sometimes it’s better for two people not to marry each other. They would both be happier married to other people—it’s that simple. Perhaps they’ve formed a relationship for the wrong reasons. But even when the motives are right, a relationship still might not have that “spark” that impels both toward marriage. In such cases, breaking up is often the kindest alternative.

Breaking up may sometimes be a difficult and grieving process, but it doesn’t have to be dreadful. People can break up a dating relationship without going to pieces.

The biggest factor in determining the outcome of a relationship is following the inspiration of the Lord. If your association seems to pull you away from God, away from righteousness, away from prayer and scriptures, you need to evaluate its influence. Sometimes, too, people will want so badly for a courtship to work that they can’t hear the Lord’s messages because of their own desires. 

Once you’ve decided the relationship is not going to work out, how do you kindly let someone know you’re serious about ending the dating relationship?

The most important thing is to communicate, compassionately, clearly what you mean. Often one person will want the other to get the message without its being clearly stated, which may mean that the person who wants to break up isn’t facing his real feelings. When you’ve cared deeply enough to date seriously, of course you shouldn’t want to hurt the other person. But that’s no reason for giving an unclear or indefinite message. Otherwise, the other person may accept only a change in the relationship, still hoping for eventual marriage.

It isn’t compassionate to try to sever a relationship slowly if you’ve already made up your mind. The other person won’t gradually get the message by your disinterest. If you’re trying to break up slowly, it’s possible that you’re mistaking your desire to not hurt the person for an excuse to be dishonest about your own feelings.

Since relationships can’t change from romance to friendship in a day or a week, it may be unrealistic and even hurtful for the two of you to spend much time together once the decision has been made. The person who initiated the break-up may be thinking, “Isn’t it civilized and nice that we can be friends?” But the other will be secretly hoping for the friendship to develop back into a romance. And if the romance can never be revived, feelings will be hurt even more deeply.

Almost always, one of you will be hurt more than the other when the relationship breaks up. If you’ve been hurt in a relationship, you may think it’s understandable that you defend yourself by denigrating or criticizing the other person. Actually, it’s a way of running from reality, and it’s a childish and defensive gesture. Whatever has not worked out, the Lord requires that we forgive all people—and this commandment is as true in a dating relationship as in any other. Bitterness is never the right solution.

People can tell you plenty of superficial ways to get over a broken relationship. They might suggest taking up golf, getting yourself back into social circulation, or looking critically at the ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend. But the grief of an ended relationship can be as real and as intense as grief following the death of someone you’ve loved. So it’s important to let yourself work through the grief process.

You may have to be willing to mourn, to let yourself down into your feelings. Grieving can be a way of accepting the end, of letting the separation come. But you have to realize that those feelings will pass, and that no matter how much it hurts, you’re going to live through it. Racing out and involving yourself frenetically in other activities won’t block it out of your mind.

At the same time, you mustn’t perform an endless postmortem on the relationship. By continually asking yourself what you did wrong or what would have happened if you’d done things differently, you keep your wounded feelings alive. Similarly, indulging yourself in what I call a “pity party” is a cruel way of hurting yourself. It won’t help to deliberately humiliate yourself with a list of your failures, as though reliving your real or imagined failures can keep them from happening again.

Remember, the Lord can give you solace in your pain. His peace can come through your family, your friends, service, prayer, fasting, scripture reading. You may find considerable relief and insight from writing in your personal journal about the relationship. And perhaps a loving Church leader can help you work through this difficult time.

It’s important that you not try to build happiness on the pretended misery of the person you have left behind. Some people carry this to a tragic extreme by not only dating but actually marrying someone else in an effort to make a former boyfriend or girlfriend miserable or jealous. They’re thinking, “I’ll show her,” or “I’ll show him,” without giving serious thought to the feelings of the person they’re actually marrying.

While you might be able to look to past relationships for lessons about life, others, or yourself, don’t overlook the positive aspect of learning to better appreciate the depth and quality of a relationship you hope to make eternal.

Like some people, you may find that you need to learn to be more honest and vulnerable in a relationship, and that you need to learn to believe in your own lovableness. As you develop those abilities, the love in your relationship can be sustained by a mutual conviction that you are loved by each other.

Then you can know the delight of being trusted with one another’s ideas and feelings. And you can know the joyous, awesome capacity to give that comes with loving.

(source: lds.org)