Contract, or Covenant?

What does it mean to sign a contract?

" 'Till Death do you Part...."  is something that many people in the world are ecstatic to hear.  It's lifelong promise of enduring companionship and love.  At least, that's what the contract implies.   In fact, there is a whole slew of items on the checklist that comes attached with our contractual unions.  Maybe some of you will recognize these promises;

"...to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part."  -- "Rite of Marriage #25".

Those are some really great promises.  Even better are the often unwritten implications -- that when we "have and hold" one another, we're talking about holding trust and having a mutual love and understanding toward one another.

However, that is not always the case.  In fact, I've seen many members of my family who are more disgusted and repulsed by their spouse than anyone else.  They feel forced into their marriage.  Their trapped by a contract.

These individuals have seen their marriage from a point of view that I refer to as contractual -- meaning that they are obligated to meet up to specific expectations, and it feels burdensome. 

There is, however, a secondary pattern I notice in my family.  Those who are unified in a marriage in one of the Temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints through an ordinance called "Sealing", see their marriage as a covenant.  A covenant is a promise that you make with God, as well as with your spouse in this case.   It includes all of the promises above, but it also demands that we live up to certain expectations of being good people, loving spouses, and parents who preside with gentleness in the home.  The covenant marriage, or sealing, means that you are practicing in this life to live together for eternity; meaning death will not part the happy married couple.  No, in fact, death is just the beginning of forever.

I would love to show you what I mean;

Recently, I had the opportunity to make a Genogram of my family.  A genogram is a nifty little chart that lets you graph out your family's relationships.  I used circle symbols to indicate women and squares for men.  I indicate marriages by a line attaching two people, and their children are branching from that line.  The green line attaching two people means that they were sealed together, or had a covenant marriage as opposed to the civil contractual marriage.  Two dashes through the black line connecting a man and a woman indicate a divorce. The little yellow square is me.

My family can get quite confusing; so let me explain a little.  My grandmother on my mom's side (top right) was married to an abusive man with whom she had two children (one of which was my mom) she divorced him and married my grandpa (the one I actually know).  They had 2 more kids.  My mother passed, and my father remarried a divorced woman.  Hopefully that makes the strange branches make a little more sense.

Now, beyond those anomalies, you'll notice something quite startling -- the marriages without the green arrow are all divorced.  And even more fascinating -- most of their kids are divorced as well (with one exception on my mothers side).

What I want to leave you with is a few notes from those family members who have the strongest marriages:

Becky and Scott --

"Don't be so serious.  Everyone is going to get uncomfortable from time to time.  Take time to slow down together, and laugh more.  Don't always demand that things be done in your way, when you want them done.  Be flexible.  Marriage definitely isn't a contract, it's a loving promise."

Chris and Heidi --

"The goal is to make your home a whisper away from Heaven.  Speak soft and kindly.  There's no need to force or enforce.  Gentle persuasion is the key."

Richard and Luane --

"Both of us have problems.  Heck, we've been dealing with problems for over half a century together.  Being married was the tool we used to overcome those problems -- not to exacerbate them."

I hope that everyone who is married will look for what they can contribute to it, not what they can demand from it.  Changing our perspective from contract to covenant is a key in moving to a new vision, and horizon, in our marriages.