From Bruce C. Hafen and his book “Covenant Hearts. . . .Marriage and the Joy of Human Love, From chapter seven we read:
When Brian was fourteen yer old, he heard a puzzling radio talk show. A woman called to talk about her marriage problems. Her husband had lost his job and he wasn’t much fun to live with anyway, some of her children were sick and they couldn’t pay their bills, and she was getting tired of all the miserable pressure. When she asked for advice the talk show host said, “Hey, your entitled to a little happiness. You don’t have to stay in this mess. Jump he fence. Get out. Let the old man solve his own problems. You go find greener pastures.’
Brian felt sympathy for the woman, but the host’s advice bothered him. He asked his parents, “When you get married, don’t they something like, ‘for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health'”?
His mother said, “You’re right about that, Brian. Good for you?” Brian wan’t satisfied. “So why would that guy on the radio tell her that? Replied his father, “Because that’s the way people are starting to think these days. The pop psychologists are telling everybody to just look out for themselves. ”
About ten years later I watched Brian and Kathy emerge from a sacred temple. They laughed and held hands as family and friends gathered to take pictures. I saw happiness and promise in their faces as they greeted their reception guests, who celebrated the creation of a new family. I wondered that night how long it would be before Brian and Kathy faced the opposition that tests every marriage. Maybe their problems wouldn’t be the same as those that hit the woman in the talk show. But I knew their trials would come. And only then would they discover if their marriage was based on a contract or a covenant.
Elder Robert D. Hales said, “An eternal bond doesn’t just happen as a result of sealing covenants we make in the temple. How we conduct ourselves in this life will determine what we will be in all the eternities to come.” Our conduct, guided by response to sealing covenants, also determines whose we will be—whether we will belong to each other, whether we will belong to Christ.
Consider the general distinction between contractual and covenant attitudes toward marriage. One bride sighed blissfully on her wedding day, “Mom, I’m at the end of all my troubles!” “Yes, replied her mother, “but at which end?”
When trouble comes, the parties to a contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away. They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they’re receiving what they bargained for. But when trouble comes to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through. They marry to obtain benefits and will stay only as long as they’re receiving what they bargained for.
But when troubles come to a covenant marriage, the husband and wife work them through. They marry to give and to grow, bound by covenant to each other, to the community, and to God. Contract companions each give 50 percent. But covenant companions each give 100 percent. Enough and to spare. Each gives enough to cover any shortfall by the other. Double coverage. Because their covenant is unqualified, they simply plan on solving their problems together—whatever trouble comes, no matter what it is, how long it takes, or what it costs.
A covenant marriage in the highest sense will begin as a temple marriage. When the partners are sufficiently righteous, the marriage will be sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise (Doctrine & Covenants 132:7), “which the Father shed forth on upon all those who are just and true.” (Doctrine & Covenants 76:53). Such a marriage will then be not only eternal in duration but also celestial in quality, for it will be a marriage that partakes of God’s quality of life. As President James E. Faust said:
“When the covenant of marriage for time and eternity, the culminating Gospel ordinance, is sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, it can literally open the windows of heaven for great blessing to flow to a married couple who seek those blessings. Such marriages become rich, whole, and sacred. Though each party to the marriage can maintain his or her separate identity, yet together in their covenants they can be like two vines wound inseparably around each other. Each thinks of his or her companion before thinking or self.” ~~~ Bruce C. Hafen, Covenants Hearts—Marriage and the Joy of Human Love (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), p.75-77 ( see A Hireling’s Contract or a Shepherd’s Covenant II )
