Let The Adventure Begin

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman and Nan Silver is a great book that reveals what successful relationships and marriages look like and includes valuable activities to help couples strengthen their relationship. He lists seven principles with activities for couples to try. The seven principles are: enhance you love maps, nurture your love fondness and admiration, turn toward each other instead of away, let your partner influence you, solve your solvable problems, overcome gridlock, and create shared meaning. Each of these principles are different and can strengthen relationships on many levels. Enhancing your love maps in the first principle. This means that happy couples are very familiar with their partner’s world. It’s like you store relevant information about your partner in a certain section of your brain. You know everything about your partner, like what their favorite movie or food is, or even what their dreams are, and your partner knows yours. Th...

Elder Robbins gives a great talk about “why Satan makes us believe that we are victims of an emotion that we cannot control.” In his talk he talks about the family and how it is central to the creators plan, but that Satan’s primary focus is to destroy the family. The family is his target and he will try everything in his power to damage it. In 3 Nephi, 11:29 it says, “For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not with me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another.” Satan’s strategy is to stir up anger between family members which can cause families to tear apart. Something that I thought that was important about what Elder Robbins shares is when he says, “becoming angry is a conscious choice, a decision; therefore, we can make the choice not to become angry. We choose!” I love that he says this because yes we can be tempted by Satan, but it is our choice if we ...

The definition of pride is "a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired." I thought President Benson gave us a great talk on being aware of being prideful. One thing that made me think when I read his talk is when he says, “the central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen.  Enmity  means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.” I thought this was interesting because we all have been prideful in our lives at one point. Satan wants us to use pride to have us turn away from others and to especially turn away from God. Satan can use pride in so many ways in our lives and that’s how he reigns over us. President Benson also talks about pride when he says, “when pride has a hold on our hearts, we lose our independence...

In an article called “Faith in Jesus Christ,” it says, “faith in Jesus Christ means to rely completely on Him-trusting in His infinite power, intelligence and love. It includes believing His teachings.” We should believe in him even though we do not understand all things, but He does. Because he knows us so well and has experienced all our sufferings, pains, and afflictions, He knows how to help us rise above our daily trials and challenges. Having faith in Jesus Christ strengthens marriages. When we base our marriages off of this gospel and Christ’s teachings, a marriage can become strong and can continue to grow in strength and love. When a marriage is centered on Christ, then it can receive eternal blessings. When I think of how faith in Jesus Christ strengthens marriages, I think of my parents marriage. My parents from the very start of the marriage made sure to always have faith in Christ and I have seen that throughout my life that they have grown closer to each other. Not onl...