Marriage in the long run.

So I am young and in love, but apparently marriage takes work to keep up (just kidding I knew that!). From this week's lesson I focus on marriage in the later years and how to keep the spark alive. When being married for many, many years, couples go through a lot of ups and downs together and sometimes that can put a strain on a marriage but we can all get through that if we put in the effort.
The book talked about a few things that can be hard to deal with when growing older, those being the empty nest, caring for loved ones and loss of loved ones. Now we all know that our parents LOVE when we move out but also it must be quite strange to not have kids living at home anymore. This quote puts it perfectly from the book, "A wife married for 33 years said, "It's important to build a good relationship with your spouse so that when the children leave, you have the underlying joy of focusing on each other and not your adult children." I feel like that sums up things for me, we need to build relationships with our spouses before children and during the years of raising them so we can foster those relationships when the children are older and out of the house. I think something else to focus on is remember that you are your spouses number one priority and vs. Please still care and love your children, but that relationship with your spouse is so tender and important that it always needs to be top on the priority list, right under Heavenly Father and Christ.
When loss of loved ones comes to couples, the book really focuses on grieving together and helping each other through the time. Loss of loved ones can be a problem with couples but if we help each other and cleave to the gospel and remember that we are all mortal than I feel that they may help with the situation. Elder Russell M. Nelson said this on death, " The only length of life that seems to satisfy the longings of the human heart is life everlasting. Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love. It is a natural response in complete accord with divine commandment: 'Thou shalt love together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die' (D&C 42:45). Moreover, we can't fully appreciate joyful reunions later without tearful separations now. The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life." This quote sums up to me that we are to mourn and miss those that are gone but still have a spot in our hearts for those living and loving us, especially our spouses. Now I know loosing a spouse is even harder but we have eternal marriages and I cannot even imagine not having Kendall there everyday but after this life we will be together forever and that goes for all sealed together in the temple!
Now I am not to that many years of marriage yet but I look forward to the many many years Kendall and I have and I know that as we focus on the Lord and each other we can continue to bring happiness to each other in our lives. I am grateful for these little tips and hopefully they helped some others and for those of us who do not need this yet, we can look back upon it later.
Happy day & Happy April!
This Mormon Message is very cute and shows that we can be what we need to be to each other through the years of marriage, our spouses are our best friends and we love them!