Tending to Our Marriages

I have a three garden boxes in my backyard.  Every February, my kids and I start the process of getting them ready for a spring planting.  The soil looks dark and rich as we mix new soil with the old.  I love to bring home the seedling plants from the nursery and carefully set them in the holes the kids have dug. There is something special about the beauty of a newly planted garden.  In just a few short months, the seedlings have matured and the tomatoes are growing where the yellow flowers had bloomed. 

My youngest daughter squeals when she discovers a zucchini under the leaves or a cucumber on the vine.  We happily harvest vegetables well into June and though the temperatures are in the 100’s, the mornings are still lovely in the garden. 

By July, however, the air is thick with heat and the pounding sun has driven us indoors for most of the day.  We brave the scorching sun to water the plants, but they still take a terrible beating in the heat and have lost the hardy look of late spring.  Before we know it, we have not watered the garden for a few days and the heat has taken its toll on the mature plants we carefully placed so many months before.  The beauty of the garden is gone and withered and warped.  I hate looking at the transformation of our garden boxes in August.  Every year, I promise myself that I will do a better job of caring for my garden in those steamy hot months and every year, I fail to do a good enough job to keep them thriving.

Spencer W. Kimball said, “Love is like a flower, and, like the body, it needs constant feeding. The mortal body would soon be emaciated and die if there were not frequent feedings. The tender flower would wither and die without food and water. And so love, also, cannot be expected to last forever unless it is continually fed with portions of love, the manifestation of esteem and admiration, the expressions of gratitude, and the consideration of unselfishness” (“Oneness in Marriage,” Ensign, Mar. 1977, 5).

Just as my garden cannot survive without water and care, marriage cannot reach its full potential without an effort to fan the flower of friendship.

Marlin K. Jensen said, “Friendship is … a vital and wonderful part of courtship and marriage. A relationship between a man and a woman that begins with friendship and then ripens into romance and eventually marriage will usually become an enduring, eternal friendship.”

One of the best ways to make sure this friendship continues to thrive is by intentional constant care.  

Are your interactions between you and your spouse mostly positive or negative?  

Did you know that for every NEGATIVE INTERACTION between the two of you, you need 5 POSITIVE interactions to counteract the negative affect?