For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth, and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise. 1

The joy of human love gives us hope and purpose. It makes us want to live better. It makes us long for the day when we will take the hands that have held ours and enter our Father’s presence together. There we will embrace not only Him but also our husbands, our wives, our children, family, and friends. There we will stay with them, always, to “go no more out” (Revelation 3:12).

We can sense a brief glimpse of that day when we taste love’s deepest stirrings and God’s Spirit brushes across our hearts. The promise of living together in love, both here and beyond time, is worth waiting for, worth trying and crying for, through all the days of life. No wonder we praise the Lord of all for this highest beauty of both earth and heaven.

The fountainhead of human love flows from a marriage between hearts knit together by covenants. When those head­waters run pure, children and grandchildren will later sing their own hymns of grateful praise: “For the love which from our birth, / Over and around us lies.” 2

Because I know these promises are true, I have watched with growing sadness over the last generation as our society has gradually but surely begun to replace an imperfect yet relatively stable “culture of marriage” with a disturbing new “culture of divorce.” This is not just an American problem.

As President Gordon B. Hinckley has said, “The family is falling apart. Not only in America, but now across the world.” 3 On another occasion, he said the number of people hurt by crumbling families is “a matter of serious concern. I think it is my most serious concern.” 4

Reflecting his concern, in 1995 the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles issued the Proclamation on the Family. In a day when “people are confused” about life’s most essential relationships, we need to hear the rest of that Primary song: “Follow the prophet, follow the prophet, / Follow the prophet; he knows the way.” 5

The Family Proclamation helps restore the perspective the world is losing. The doctrine and principles expressed in that Proclamation are the foundation for what this book tries to say about marriage.

Just since the late 1960s, American law and culture have dramatically and tragically changed how most people now think about marriage, families, sex, and children. Drawing on my background from teaching family law, but much more fully informed by my Church experience, I attempt to explain here some of the reasons why today’s culture no longer supports our traditional attitudes.

As that support has dwindled, society does not always value what we do when we exert ourselves to nurture our own commitments. We may feel lonely or even strange, because we are going against the grain of a ­laid-­back, permissive society in a countercultural way. But we cannot let the world’s values dictate our ­own — ­there is too much at stake for that.

Part of what’s at stake is that our marriage really can be the most satisfying and sanctifying —­ and the most ­demanding — ­experience of our lives.

It is more than coincidence that the most sanctifying experiences of our spiritual lives should also be the most demanding experiences. Family life, with marriage at its center, is the homeroom of the earth school our Father created to give His children a place to learn and to grow. Our homes are laboratories where we test and develop our religion.

That makes it all the more risky that today’s society no longer understands marriage the way God originally gave it to His children. Being married isn’t easy. It isn’t supposed to be easy. But when a confused culture confuses us about what marriage means, we may give up on ourselves and each other much too soon.

Consider four other brief points by way of preface. First, I include a number of stories as illustrations. The names in nearly all of these cases have been changed to protect personal privacy, even though the stories are based on actual experiences. I appreciate and admire these people. I have learned a great deal from them.

Second, I hope to convey accurate assumptions regarding “ideal” marriages and families in the Church. Once a couple is married in the temple, they are not yet living a celestial life. Rather, they walk out of the temple much the way Adam and Eve left the Garden of ­Eden — ­to enter a sometimes tough and lonely world. Their temple wedding gives them the authority of eternal marriage, but they will spend the rest of their lives working to create a marriage of celestial quality, striving and growing against opposition.

As Elder Neal A. Maxwell once said, “Authority in the priesthood is given through ordination, but power in the priesthood is received through righteous living.” 6 That principle describes the sources of power in a true celestial marriage.

All marriages and all families struggle as we try to live up to the gospel’s teachings about family life. That is both normal and expected. No, we’re not perfect, but the very process of working toward that ideal is central to our personal growth. This makes me more interested in learning how to strive than in eliminating the need to strive. There is joy in the journey, not just in the ­destination.

At the same time, one reason we’ve seen more divorce in the last generation is that when our marriages struggle, we don’t expect the same degree of idealistic conduct of one another. At least we’re less openly judgmental, and much of that increased tolerance is desirable. But we must find ways to uphold high expectations even as we honestly acknowledge the heavy lifting and the exasperating personal weaknesses we all face in stretching toward our ideals.

Third, I realize from the experience of close friends that many faithful people do not now live in the kind of family situation they desire and for which they are fully qualified. Many factors can throw us off ­course —­ many of them beyond our control. Some people of exceptional faith live in the daily grinding effort of difficult marriages. Some are divorced after stretching themselves beyond the breaking point to improve their relationships and their lives. Some remain unmarried, despite years of conscientious searching.

People who seem to have achieved a “proper” marriage are not necessarily better or more faithful than those whose marriage still eludes them. We must learn how to talk about making stronger marriages without judging or losing compassion for those who as yet have no marriage.

As the prophets have always taught, the Lord will ultimately compensate the faithful men and women who are denied family fulfillment in mortality. 7 Until then, there are other, preparatory ways to grow spiritually, even to taste many of the joys of family life.

I have known some people who feel like broken links in a family chain, yet who develop so much compensating spiritual depth that they help heal not only their own wounds but larger wounds in a family pattern. Of them, Isaiah wrote, “And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in” (Isaiah 58:12; italics added).

Fourth, this book is a personal expression and is not an official statement of Church doctrine.

My larger purpose is to explore how the restored gospel can help us transcend the modern chaos. Its teachings will keep us, realistically but securely, gathered in the arms of married love — ­the kind we imagine unfolding from wedding pictures or the kind we see in the story of Adam and Eve, the archetypal marriage story in which human love, blessed by God’s love, does overcome all opposition and last forever.