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Lesson 4 - A Contract or a Covenant?


When my husband and I were married, we were blissfully unaware of the challenges that would lie ahead. We began dating when I was in high school and after a time we broke up. We got back together, and he left on a church mission the same month I entered BYU as a college freshman. While he was out serving, the Church changed the length of missions from two years to eighteen months which was probably divine intervention, because I was seriously dating another young man. Ray got home from his mission February 1983, we were engaged by April, and married in July.

Prior to our marriage, we didn’t have any serious discussions about our future. We didn’t discuss how many children we wanted or how we were going to raise them. I do think, however, that we both knew the other person was committed to making our marriage work and that gospel living was an important element to our future.

We have now been married for almost 36 years. We have experienced joy, fear, sadness, anxiety, love, a lot of laughter, and contentment. We have grown together, and we have grown in our love for the Lord. We know that we have made covenants, and we work to honor those covenants.

Contract vs. Covenant

A couple of years before we married, a close family member was married. That marriage ended in divorce. While I don’t know all the reasons they chose to divorce, I believe a big portion of it could be attributed to the fact that they had a contractual marriage. When things weren’t going as they had dreamed, they chose to walk away. At the time, one of the couple stated that they wanted to divorce before they grew to hate each other. There weren’t any major problems at the time; they just felt that a divorce would eventually occur so they might as well divorce sooner rather than later. Elder Bruce C. Hafen of the Quorum of Seventy has said, “When troubles come, the parties to a contractual marriage seek happiness by walking away” (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1996/10/covenant-marriage?lang=eng). Of course, we all know that troubles will come. Every relationship will have difficulties. We weaken our chance of surviving those difficulties together when we choose a contractual marriage over a covenant marriage.

It is important to note that both spouses must be willing to work at keeping temple covenants. That does not always happen, but in my case, it has been so. We have tried to make decisions within the framework of what is best for our eternal family. President Henry B. Eyring, Counselor in the First Presidency of the Church has said, “There is nothing that has come or will come into your family as important as the sealing blessings. There is nothing more important than honoring the marriage and family covenants you have made or will make in the temples of God.” (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/families-under-covenant?lang=eng) Elder Hafen continued, “Covenant marriage requires a total leap of faith: they must keep their covenants without knowing what risks that may require of them. They must surrender unconditionally, obeying God and sacrificing for each other. Then they will discover what Alma called ‘incomprehensible joy.’” As my husband and I strive to keep our covenants and sacrifice for each other, I know the promise of incomprehensible joy (eternal life with my family) will be ours through the eternities.

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