Misshalfway

I'm all for flexibility.  The sealing is what matters.  I can't see anything doctrinally that says anything about timing.  If it's at the start, the end, or stuffed in the middle somewhere, it's all good.  We have flexibility for converts and people in other countries.  Why not give flexibility everywhere?  We add on the ring ceremony, don't we?  and we even allow it inside the sealing room.  It's not part of the sealing.  And we do that, why?  Because it's important to people.  Why not open the door to more flexibility?  
 
Go have another party/ceremony/ritual that will include and protect your family from unnecessary hurts.  And then don't worry about it.  We humans worry about stuff way too much.

It depends. Did you take something from me? IF you did, then IT'S SERIOUS!

I believe that was ultimately matters is the sealing, whether you get legally married at the same time or are sealed later.
 
Don't let yourself be manipulated, but do what makes you as a couple happiest--as long as you are intent on making it to the temple now or later. Do you want the sealing now? Do you highly value having all the family at the actual ceremony? Consider what you want.

Mine is ... courage.
 
Fear gets me too much of the time.  It's time to slay some of that.

Yup.  Testimony meeting is a crapshoot.  You never know what you are going to get.  I've left feeling uplifted and like I'm not so alone in my troubles.  
 
But other times I'm sorry to say that I leave with my eyes rolling.  I'm embarrassed for that behavior.  With a church full of humans with such varied experience and perspective and in speaking ability and imperfect emotions, who am I to judge it?  Yet I do.  I go home and rant about all the human weakness that drives me nuts!  I pick those people apart and argue with their words and demand in my mind a more perfect meeting so I....the great and important me...gets what I deserve from a church service!!!  
 
Yuck.
 
If I stop thinking about myself and think of that older man who spoke in your ward.  I wonder if he's struggling.  I think.... He's lost the world he knew and the values that used to give him security and comfort.  And now he tries to navigate a world he doesn't understand with perspectives he doesn't relate too.  He's mourning the past and arguing with the present and afraid of the future. And maybe he just wants it to go back to the way it was.
 
If I think that....what's there to argue with?  He's a man who is mourning.  Don't we all mourn?  And aren't we suppose to mourn with each other?
 
I don't know.  Thinking this way prolly won't make me like testimony meeting anymore than I do now, but maybe I'd love the people better.  And maybe if I practice this more, I'll like myself more.  I don't know.  Or maybe I don't want to be so afraid that if I got up there and risked to share some of my thoughts that my ward wouldn't be tearing me apart over their pot roast later that day.  

Seems strange to me that some are so quick to judge other's testimony efforts as invalid, in need of correction, or otherwise wrong.
 
Beam in our own eyes, indeed.

I agree, but here is the other side to the story. When I was a young father, my oldest, who was four, wanted to bear his testimony and asked for my help. So I went up to the stand with him. As he stood at the pulpit, he clearly didn't know what to say. So I asked him who he loved. He said, "You and mama." I told him to say it to the people. (Result: "I love you and Mama" over the mike.) I asked if he knew who the prophet was, and told him to tell it to the people. It continued like this for perhaps 30 seconds or a minute.
 
In retrospect, I may have done much better to have taken him home and used family home evenings to practice testimony-bearing and to explore what a "testimony" is. But I didn't come into parenthood knowing how to do everything, and learning things has been a long, messy project for all involved. So I try to have patience with parents in such situations.

I hate when "friends" treat others like you are a disposable tissue. You are good when they *need* you and you are not, when they don't, I call it "convenient friendship". After reading your post Bini, it doesn't sound like they were making last minute plans. If I was you, I would still be normal with them when they contact me etc but I wouldn't force myself to them and I wouldn't go out with them anymore. Real friends behave differently.

There is a major difference between forgiving someone and allowing them to continue hurting you.

That's some pretty evil stuff, if you ask me.Yeah. Evil. I said it.

Well, there's general conference....
 
...and general conference.....
 
...and oh yeah, general conference.  :)

I'm really sorry this is happening to you, OP.  It's so hard to offer advice on this without really hearing what your wife feels but, it does sounds like she is pretty good at defenses like dismissing the problem or blaming you or making you jump through hoops to pacify or buy her time.  I couldn't know, but it sounds to me like there is underlying issues for sure and my guess is they are emotional in nature.  And I'm sorry all your efforts to diagnose things have proved so fruitless and frustrating.
 
I will say that, in general, I don't think women really understand what its like for husbands to not get sex.  I don't think we understand what if feels like to get turned down and how hard it is to feel close and safe in the relationship without it, and how hard it is to navigate a woman who is always a moving target.  
 
Perhaps on the flip side men struggle to understand women too, but in the Mormon culture, I worry that women see male sex drive as something unbridled or lustful or selfish.   And therefore, it's something that is easily dismissed.  I wonder if, because of our lack of education/understanding about sex that women feel somehow triggered when they see a husband aroused and hungry for sex.  As if it means that the man only wants sex and doesn't love them or value them.  And that if she gives in she'll only be an object of lust and somehow be used in the transaction.  It makes sense to me that if a person feels objectified they are not going to feel safe and are probably going to shut down to protect themselves.  I can't know if this bears any relevance whatsoever to your wife's sexual reluctance, but I offer it anyway.
  
I do want to say I believe that the best sex grows in emotional safety.  Something that may be a newer idea in an age where "good sex" comes from "turning each other on".  Not that using human attractions to sex is wrong or bad, it's just that pleasing and placating behaviors, even if they come from a loving place, are actually distancing behaviors.  So, what's meant as  a method of connecting two people actually ends up separating them.  And, as most of us know,  real intimacy and emotional safety only happens when both parties are real, vulnerable, open, and present.  If one is using vacuuming as a way to communicate all their deepest emotional longings....well, chances are the message will not get through.  And maybe something else will get communicated.  Like, "Hey, I really only want sex.  I 'm not really thinking about you and how I'm longing to be close to you.  I'm thinking about how I can get what I need the fastest.  So see the cleaned dishes?  I did the right thing, can you put out?"  I mean it's not like women are cold drink dispensers.  Put in the right quarter and she'll "turn on" for you.  You know?  And it's not like talking about marital duty is the best aphrodisiac.  If you are going there, you might as well say, "Brace yourself, Effie!"
 
I don't know what's going on with your wife.  Maybe sex is painful.  Maybe her hormones are off.  Maybe she doesn't feel loved or cherished or pretty anymore.  Maybe she has a secret wish to be a nun. I don't know.
 
What I do think I heard, was that she tries to tell you her pain and she didn't get heard.  Like when she talked about how hard it is to be left home with kids and housework.  And how you may have dismissed her or defended yourself by saying work isn't exactly easy either.  What I see there is that her emotional needs are being dismissed, much like your sexual needs are being dismissed.  The responsiveness, the warmth, the soft place to fall stuff is all missing.  I mean, maybe when she asks for you to help with the house, she really just needs you to see what she's going through and to feel like she's not alone in carrying the weight of raising kids.  She needs you to take out trash, yes that's helpful...but she really needs your empathy, your responsive and insightful support, and she needs YOU to fill the void.  Clean dishes can't do that.  You see?
 
Hope i've offered something helpful.

You know.  Sometimes humans think like boneheads.  We don't see what the Lord is doing with people.  We judge instead and think we know best and forget to get out of the way and let God nurture and trust his children when and how he wants to.
 
I love that your bishop was willing to be so honest and to share with you the humanness in the situation.  It must have been hard to decide what to say or what not to say.  In the end, he trusted you!  I love that.  
 
And now that you know that the people you'll be working with are human too, perhaps that means that your calling, or your chances for learning how they do things in Heaven, have already begun!  So many opportunities to learn tolerance, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and humility.  Yes?  As if callings are about getting "stuff done the right way". lol.
 
Another poster said something about "Callings must be done in love!"  As if any of us has learned the love and serve perfectly.   I don't know anything about performing my callings in perfection.  I only know how to give my offerings and relying on faith that God loves the widows and their beautiful little mites and that hopefully He'll love mine too.
 
Go give 'em heaven!  You'll do just fine.  I'm pretty sure God thinks you can.  So what could the children of men say against that? :)

I'm really sorry this is happening to you, OP.  It's so hard to offer advice on this without really hearing what your wife feels but, it does sounds like she is pretty good at defenses like dismissing the problem or blaming you or making you jump through hoops to pacify or buy her time.  I couldn't know, but it sounds to me like there is underlying issues for sure and my guess is they are emotional in nature.  And I'm sorry all your efforts to diagnose things have proved so fruitless and frustrating.
 
I will say that, in general, I don't think women really understand what its like for husbands to not get sex.  I don't think we understand what if feels like to get turned down and how hard it is to feel close and safe in the relationship without it, and how hard it is to navigate a woman who is always a moving target.  
 
Perhaps on the flip side men struggle to understand women too, but in the Mormon culture, I worry that women see male sex drive as something unbridled or lustful or selfish.   And therefore, it's something that is easily dismissed.  I wonder if, because of our lack of education/understanding about sex that women feel somehow triggered when they see a husband aroused and hungry for sex.  As if it means that the man only wants sex and doesn't love them or value them.  And that if she gives in she'll only be an object of lust and somehow be used in the transaction.  It makes sense to me that if a person feels objectified they are not going to feel safe and are probably going to shut down to protect themselves.  I can't know if this bears any relevance whatsoever to your wife's sexual reluctance, but I offer it anyway.
  
I do want to say I believe that the best sex grows in emotional safety.  Something that may be a newer idea in an age where "good sex" comes from "turning each other on".  Not that using human attractions to sex is wrong or bad, it's just that pleasing and placating behaviors, even if they come from a loving place, are actually distancing behaviors.  So, what's meant as  a method of connecting two people actually ends up separating them.  And, as most of us know,  real intimacy and emotional safety only happens when both parties are real, vulnerable, open, and present.  If one is using vacuuming as a way to communicate all their deepest emotional longings....well, chances are the message will not get through.  And maybe something else will get communicated.  Like, "Hey, I really only want sex.  I 'm not really thinking about you and how I'm longing to be close to you.  I'm thinking about how I can get what I need the fastest.  So see the cleaned dishes?  I did the right thing, can you put out?"  I mean it's not like women are cold drink dispensers.  Put in the right quarter and she'll "turn on" for you.  You know?  And it's not like talking about marital duty is the best aphrodisiac.  If you are going there, you might as well say, "Brace yourself, Effie!"
 
I don't know what's going on with your wife.  Maybe sex is painful.  Maybe her hormones are off.  Maybe she doesn't feel loved or cherished or pretty anymore.  Maybe she has a secret wish to be a nun. I don't know.
 
What I do think I heard, was that she tries to tell you her pain and she didn't get heard.  Like when she talked about how hard it is to be left home with kids and housework.  And how you may have dismissed her or defended yourself by saying work isn't exactly easy either.  What I see there is that her emotional needs are being dismissed, much like your sexual needs are being dismissed.  The responsiveness, the warmth, the soft place to fall stuff is all missing.  I mean, maybe when she asks for you to help with the house, she really just needs you to see what she's going through and to feel like she's not alone in carrying the weight of raising kids.  She needs you to take out trash, yes that's helpful...but she really needs your empathy, your responsive and insightful support, and she needs YOU to fill the void.  Clean dishes can't do that.  You see?
 
Hope i've offered something helpful.

I'm really sorry this is happening to you, OP.  It's so hard to offer advice on this without really hearing what your wife feels but, it does sounds like she is pretty good at defenses like dismissing the problem or blaming you or making you jump through hoops to pacify or buy her time.  I couldn't know, but it sounds to me like there is underlying issues for sure and my guess is they are emotional in nature.  And I'm sorry all your efforts to diagnose things have proved so fruitless and frustrating.
 
I will say that, in general, I don't think women really understand what its like for husbands to not get sex.  I don't think we understand what if feels like to get turned down and how hard it is to feel close and safe in the relationship without it, and how hard it is to navigate a woman who is always a moving target.  
 
Perhaps on the flip side men struggle to understand women too, but in the Mormon culture, I worry that women see male sex drive as something unbridled or lustful or selfish.   And therefore, it's something that is easily dismissed.  I wonder if, because of our lack of education/understanding about sex that women feel somehow triggered when they see a husband aroused and hungry for sex.  As if it means that the man only wants sex and doesn't love them or value them.  And that if she gives in she'll only be an object of lust and somehow be used in the transaction.  It makes sense to me that if a person feels objectified they are not going to feel safe and are probably going to shut down to protect themselves.  I can't know if this bears any relevance whatsoever to your wife's sexual reluctance, but I offer it anyway.
  
I do want to say I believe that the best sex grows in emotional safety.  Something that may be a newer idea in an age where "good sex" comes from "turning each other on".  Not that using human attractions to sex is wrong or bad, it's just that pleasing and placating behaviors, even if they come from a loving place, are actually distancing behaviors.  So, what's meant as  a method of connecting two people actually ends up separating them.  And, as most of us know,  real intimacy and emotional safety only happens when both parties are real, vulnerable, open, and present.  If one is using vacuuming as a way to communicate all their deepest emotional longings....well, chances are the message will not get through.  And maybe something else will get communicated.  Like, "Hey, I really only want sex.  I 'm not really thinking about you and how I'm longing to be close to you.  I'm thinking about how I can get what I need the fastest.  So see the cleaned dishes?  I did the right thing, can you put out?"  I mean it's not like women are cold drink dispensers.  Put in the right quarter and she'll "turn on" for you.  You know?  And it's not like talking about marital duty is the best aphrodisiac.  If you are going there, you might as well say, "Brace yourself, Effie!"
 
I don't know what's going on with your wife.  Maybe sex is painful.  Maybe her hormones are off.  Maybe she doesn't feel loved or cherished or pretty anymore.  Maybe she has a secret wish to be a nun. I don't know.
 
What I do think I heard, was that she tries to tell you her pain and she didn't get heard.  Like when she talked about how hard it is to be left home with kids and housework.  And how you may have dismissed her or defended yourself by saying work isn't exactly easy either.  What I see there is that her emotional needs are being dismissed, much like your sexual needs are being dismissed.  The responsiveness, the warmth, the soft place to fall stuff is all missing.  I mean, maybe when she asks for you to help with the house, she really just needs you to see what she's going through and to feel like she's not alone in carrying the weight of raising kids.  She needs you to take out trash, yes that's helpful...but she really needs your empathy, your responsive and insightful support, and she needs YOU to fill the void.  Clean dishes can't do that.  You see?
 
Hope i've offered something helpful.

You know.  Sometimes humans think like boneheads.  We don't see what the Lord is doing with people.  We judge instead and think we know best and forget to get out of the way and let God nurture and trust his children when and how he wants to.
 
I love that your bishop was willing to be so honest and to share with you the humanness in the situation.  It must have been hard to decide what to say or what not to say.  In the end, he trusted you!  I love that.  
 
And now that you know that the people you'll be working with are human too, perhaps that means that your calling, or your chances for learning how they do things in Heaven, have already begun!  So many opportunities to learn tolerance, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and humility.  Yes?  As if callings are about getting "stuff done the right way". lol.
 
Another poster said something about "Callings must be done in love!"  As if any of us has learned the love and serve perfectly.   I don't know anything about performing my callings in perfection.  I only know how to give my offerings and relying on faith that God loves the widows and their beautiful little mites and that hopefully He'll love mine too.
 
Go give 'em heaven!  You'll do just fine.  I'm pretty sure God thinks you can.  So what could the children of men say against that? :)

Well, there's general conference....
 
...and general conference.....
 
...and oh yeah, general conference.  :)

Well, I don't know exactly what you are going through Priesthoodpower, and I can't know what you wife is feeling, but I don't think submission is a good thing in any case.  That sort of reaction seems like a way to stop the conflict and maybe placate the situation into feeling peaceful and supportive when it truly may not be.  What I mean is that "being submissive" could actually be rather dishonest and defensive.  And that just decreases the trust in the relationship.
 
I'd rather see the two people listen more and seek to understand each other more in empathetic ways. I know I tend to do better when my partner listens to my feelings, my concerns, and even my disillusionment in non-reactive ways.  And when I feel deeply understood and supported, I know I get less defensive and feel more willing to reciprocate in supportive ways.  If I feel judged, I don't do as well.  Are you like that?
 
I don't know what it is about your wife's new parenting that is alarming you, but you are still married and she is still obligated to negotiate parenting practices with you.  I don't see a problem with you sharing your concerns/fears,etc.  Hopefully she can adjust to meet your needs.  Of course if you harbor fears and resentments without talking or your approach feels like an attack....well, you'll probably experience more disconnection.  And that will be crappy.

Hello "Newbie".  It must have been so difficult for you to experience your wife's concerns with testimony.  Probably felt like the earth was shifting under your feet as she suddenly seems like a different person and as you grapple with how to handle this inside your mind and inside your relationship.
 
Had you interviewed me earlier in my life, an experience like this might have scared the pants of me.  But now, I see these experiences as really important opportunities. Opportunities to strengthen the marital bond, opportunities to learn how to use "trials" to grow and expand in wisdom and love, and huge opportunities for God to provide individual tutorials.
 
If I had any advice for you, it would be to exercise faith.  This is perhaps just some spiritual weather....like a wind storm that blows around a lot.  And my guess is that the intensity will most likely die down in time.  Have faith in that beautiful person you met and married.  Have faith in who she is and in her inner strength to weather storms like this.
 
Next,  practice bridling your inner protestor!  Instead, listen to her feelings.  Get curious.  Allow her to talk it out and be her soft place to fall.  Seek to understand without judgment.  Can you do that?  Listen without judgment?  That ought to challenge you. :)
 
When fear fills our minds, its like mud on the windshield and we end up in crazy panicked swerving if we're not careful.  Use the spirit of love and peace and a faith-filled willingness to slow down your emotional reactions and anchor your responses.  Remember the vision of the tree of life?  Remember how those who hold tight to the rod still experience the mists of darkness?  That's all this is.  Just a little mist of darkness.  And yeah, it's scary.  But remember what perfect love does.  It's casts out all that fear.  Lean instead on trusting yourself, your wife, your God, and in trusting that earth life is suppose to stretch us in these ways.  My experience is that fighting processes like this creates unnecessary pain and suffering.  Submitting with a teachable spirit brings growth.
 
Best wishes to you as you figure this out.
Misshalfway.

I'm sorry.  But this assessment feels rather one dimensional to me.  I appreciate the idea that one little breeze of anti mormon sentiment shouldn't topple a strong testimony, but we can't know what happens in peoples hearts.  We can't know their experiences and what leads one to an experience with doubt.  
 
I look back at my life in the church and I now appreciate so very much my experiences with doubt and disillusionment.  They were necessary building blocks and I'm a better person for it.  And now after having some experience with this stuff, it hurts me to feel such judgments from other members.  Other members who may have looked at my experience at some unstable moment in time and completely misunderstood what God may have been doing with me.

Let your heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid.  Ok?
 
I was the one in my marriage that wanted to leave the church.  And my husband has handled it like a champ.  He didn't over react.  And he didn't judge me.  In fact, on more than one occasion he told me he trusted me.  That one thing reinforced me more than anything.  Knowing he trusted that I was still a good person and that he knew I'd find the path way of truth because he knew who I really was.  What a gift he gave me!
 
I look back on those years now as some of the most important of my life...and the life of my marriage.  Husband and me...gosh we had some great conversations.  We didn't care so much about agreeing.  We just tried to practice seeing things from the other's point of view.  And that really helped. It made it safe to explore or even get things wrong in front of each other.  It felt so safe to be able to trust my husband to know I didn't believe in God or that I didn't trust the priesthood in the church or that I didn't understand if Jesus knew my name. All of it passed and resolved over time.  And I felt God walk with me through the whole thing and received more than one witness that it was part of God's plan for my life to experience all of it.  But to have my very orthodox, conservative husband walk with me through it to helped me feel so loved and so much less afraid.  
 
And I tried to do the same for him.  To be there when he talked about how hard it was to be married to someone who might leave the church or to think about the scary alterations that something like that would bring.  I look back now and I wonder if part of the reason it all happened was to teach the both of us how to love more.  Pretty cool, eh?  And I really cherish all the building that those experiences gave to my marriage.  Priceless.

Let your heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid.  Ok?
 
I was the one in my marriage that wanted to leave the church.  And my husband has handled it like a champ.  He didn't over react.  And he didn't judge me.  In fact, on more than one occasion he told me he trusted me.  That one thing reinforced me more than anything.  Knowing he trusted that I was still a good person and that he knew I'd find the path way of truth because he knew who I really was.  What a gift he gave me!
 
I look back on those years now as some of the most important of my life...and the life of my marriage.  Husband and me...gosh we had some great conversations.  We didn't care so much about agreeing.  We just tried to practice seeing things from the other's point of view.  And that really helped. It made it safe to explore or even get things wrong in front of each other.  It felt so safe to be able to trust my husband to know I didn't believe in God or that I didn't trust the priesthood in the church or that I didn't understand if Jesus knew my name. All of it passed and resolved over time.  And I felt God walk with me through the whole thing and received more than one witness that it was part of God's plan for my life to experience all of it.  But to have my very orthodox, conservative husband walk with me through it to helped me feel so loved and so much less afraid.  
 
And I tried to do the same for him.  To be there when he talked about how hard it was to be married to someone who might leave the church or to think about the scary alterations that something like that would bring.  I look back now and I wonder if part of the reason it all happened was to teach the both of us how to love more.  Pretty cool, eh?  And I really cherish all the building that those experiences gave to my marriage.  Priceless.

I'm sorry.  But this assessment feels rather one dimensional to me.  I appreciate the idea that one little breeze of anti mormon sentiment shouldn't topple a strong testimony, but we can't know what happens in peoples hearts.  We can't know their experiences and what leads one to an experience with doubt.  
 
I look back at my life in the church and I now appreciate so very much my experiences with doubt and disillusionment.  They were necessary building blocks and I'm a better person for it.  And now after having some experience with this stuff, it hurts me to feel such judgments from other members.  Other members who may have looked at my experience at some unstable moment in time and completely misunderstood what God may have been doing with me.

Hello "Newbie".  It must have been so difficult for you to experience your wife's concerns with testimony.  Probably felt like the earth was shifting under your feet as she suddenly seems like a different person and as you grapple with how to handle this inside your mind and inside your relationship.
 
Had you interviewed me earlier in my life, an experience like this might have scared the pants of me.  But now, I see these experiences as really important opportunities. Opportunities to strengthen the marital bond, opportunities to learn how to use "trials" to grow and expand in wisdom and love, and huge opportunities for God to provide individual tutorials.
 
If I had any advice for you, it would be to exercise faith.  This is perhaps just some spiritual weather....like a wind storm that blows around a lot.  And my guess is that the intensity will most likely die down in time.  Have faith in that beautiful person you met and married.  Have faith in who she is and in her inner strength to weather storms like this.
 
Next,  practice bridling your inner protestor!  Instead, listen to her feelings.  Get curious.  Allow her to talk it out and be her soft place to fall.  Seek to understand without judgment.  Can you do that?  Listen without judgment?  That ought to challenge you. :)
 
When fear fills our minds, its like mud on the windshield and we end up in crazy panicked swerving if we're not careful.  Use the spirit of love and peace and a faith-filled willingness to slow down your emotional reactions and anchor your responses.  Remember the vision of the tree of life?  Remember how those who hold tight to the rod still experience the mists of darkness?  That's all this is.  Just a little mist of darkness.  And yeah, it's scary.  But remember what perfect love does.  It's casts out all that fear.  Lean instead on trusting yourself, your wife, your God, and in trusting that earth life is suppose to stretch us in these ways.  My experience is that fighting processes like this creates unnecessary pain and suffering.  Submitting with a teachable spirit brings growth.
 
Best wishes to you as you figure this out.
Misshalfway.

Let your heart not be troubled, neither let it be afraid.  Ok?
 
I was the one in my marriage that wanted to leave the church.  And my husband has handled it like a champ.  He didn't over react.  And he didn't judge me.  In fact, on more than one occasion he told me he trusted me.  That one thing reinforced me more than anything.  Knowing he trusted that I was still a good person and that he knew I'd find the path way of truth because he knew who I really was.  What a gift he gave me!
 
I look back on those years now as some of the most important of my life...and the life of my marriage.  Husband and me...gosh we had some great conversations.  We didn't care so much about agreeing.  We just tried to practice seeing things from the other's point of view.  And that really helped. It made it safe to explore or even get things wrong in front of each other.  It felt so safe to be able to trust my husband to know I didn't believe in God or that I didn't trust the priesthood in the church or that I didn't understand if Jesus knew my name. All of it passed and resolved over time.  And I felt God walk with me through the whole thing and received more than one witness that it was part of God's plan for my life to experience all of it.  But to have my very orthodox, conservative husband walk with me through it to helped me feel so loved and so much less afraid.  
 
And I tried to do the same for him.  To be there when he talked about how hard it was to be married to someone who might leave the church or to think about the scary alterations that something like that would bring.  I look back now and I wonder if part of the reason it all happened was to teach the both of us how to love more.  Pretty cool, eh?  And I really cherish all the building that those experiences gave to my marriage.  Priceless.