Is Marriage Fair?

On my husband's wedding band I had the words  "For Time and all Eternity," engraved into the inside of his ring. This line is taken form the sealing ordinance performed in the sacred temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What a grand and wonderful prospect, to know that this is only the start of eternity. Most all of my immediate family are members of the Church and as such being married in the Temple has been instilled in us from our infancy. However living a life to be temple ready is not an easy one, there are many sacrifices that must be made. Society today loves to focus on the individual instead of the partnership that has been created once married. Things will never be the way that they were before the marriage, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Just before I got married my father told me the counsel that his father had given him before he got married. And it went something like this:

"Son, you're getting married, tell me, when you're married how is it best to divvy up all of the work?"

"Well, I think that 50/50 would be best."

"No... You have to be willing to give 100%, 100% of the time."

"But that's not fair."

"It doesn't matter if it's fair Son there will be days when your sweetheart for whatever reason can only give 36% and you can't just stop when you get to your 50, you have to be willing to go that extra 14 or even 50%, because you love her. And it works the other way as well, for those days when you can only give 22% she'll compensate for your missing 28%"

If you want a marriage that will last throughout all of the eternities, you need to be able to dedicate your whole self to it. Only then will you be able to weather the good and the bad, the joy's and the tragedies, the sunny weather and the hurricanes, together as equal partners for time and all eternity. After all this is only the beginning of your story together.