A Good Combination

I love to eat popcorn while I watch a movie.  It’s a great snack!  The only thing that makes it better is when I add M&M’s to the popcorn.  This takes my movie snack to a whole new level.  Who doesn’t love a bite of salty popcorn mixed with the sweet chocolaty taste of a crunchy M&M’s?  The secret to the success of this simple treat is the combination of both the salty and the sweet.  And I just can’t get enough.

We could argue all day about what we prefer.  Salty or Sweet?  But when it comes right down to it, we agree that there is something lovely about this combination.

Embracing our differences

I think the same principle applies to marriage and parenting.  We could debate all day about the contributions of women and men to marriage and parenting.  Both sexes have great strengths and necessary gifts to bless their partners and children.  We could spend a lot of time listing the merits of both and what their individual contributions bring to their relationships, or we could stop trying to figure it out and savor the combination of gifts and talents, preferences and strengths. 

David A. Bednar said, “The man completes and perfects the woman and the woman completes and perfects the man as they learn from and mutually strengthen and bless each other.”

In a society where we get really hung up on equality of the two sexes, it’s reassuring to affirm that our differences actually benefit us as a unit.  We see this played out every week in football.  A quarterback can’t win a game without the other players on his team.  The collective unit is needed to achieve success.

We know this isn’t just a philosophical sports idea.  

It’s an eternal truth.  

Straight from the Bible we read, “Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:11).  

This type of relationship teaches us that in a marriage or as parents, we are “equally yoked.”  This illusion reminds us that in another century the oxen pulled wagons standing side-by-side and not single-file.  Elder Earl C. Tingey, said that this type of marital relationship has existed from the beginning of time and teaches us that relationships established in this way “result in an absolute equal partnership between a husband and a wife. Eve was to be equal to Adam as a husband and wife are to be equal to each other.”

A Reminder that Equality is different than Sameness

Parenting has taught me this more than anything.  Sometimes my children need their dad and his humor and his personality in a way that is very different from what I offer them.  At other times, they reach out to me, the mom, for consolation or comfort.  They share day-to-day details of their lives and look to me to help problem solve and find solutions.  How grateful I am they have a dad who often picks up the slack of my own inadequacies.

This always reminds me to appreciate our differences as a couple.  While sometimes differences can be frustrating and annoying, I have found that most often they provide a depth and real help to me as we go throughout our lives.  In a beautiful way, I think we also take turns being the salty and the sweet in our relationship.  I definitely need to stop more often and savor our differences just as I do when I eat popcorn and M&M’s.