Cherishing Your Spouse

Colleen Cluff

When I think about God’s plan “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” I imagine Him specifically helping me. I can see Him having a big role in my personal life, my spiritual life and my emotional life. He not only has sent the Holy Ghost to comfort and guide me, but he has given me people here to do the same. I’ve been blessed with a loving and kind family, also, the best husband. They all support me and have helped me tremendously in my life so far. 

God’s plan isn’t just for me though. He has done the same exact thing for all His children. One of them being my husband. My husband, Noah, loves, appreciates, serves and does so much more for me. He truly cherishes and nurtures me as his wife. 

It is easy to give love to someone who loves you so much in return. As stated before, my husband really does love and know me. He understands how I feel most of the time and tries all the time to make me happy. I’ve found it is easy to then do the same for him. My biggest goal and accomplishment in life right now is seeing him happy. I love seeing him smile, I love making him laugh, and I love making him feel loved. 

One of the biggest things I loved about this week’s reading was from John M. Gottman’s book, “the Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work”. He talked all about knowing and loving your partner. And sometimes that may not be easy. He specifically spoke about new parents. When a child comes into a family it can either bring the parents closer or drive them apart. I took this very personally because my husband and I are actually expecting our first kid in a couple of months. So, I felt hyper-aware of our love map. If I know him and he knows me then we too can be like Ken and Maggie who Gottman said this about– “they went through the transformation to parenthood together, without losing sight of each other or their marriage.” (Gottman, p. 56) Changing the dynamics of our relationship by adding a child to the mix sounds intimidating sometimes, but the ideas behind enhancing our love map has given me a lot of hope.  I don’t expect parenthood to be easy, but I know it will be good with my husband by my side.