Week 7: Turning Toward One Another

D&C 64:33 "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."

From the beginning of a relationship, it’s all about the little things. Who is going to text first? Who is going to make the first move at the theater to hold the other’s hand? Who calls that meeting to DTR (define the relationship)? These small things lead up to other small things that tend to culminate into seemingly bigger things. Hanging out becomes dating, ring shopping becomes a proposal, choosing a florist becomes a wedding, and a simple “yes”, becomes the rest of your eternity with someone else.

I look back at the path I’ve taken in life and I can recognize these “small things” that have brought about greatness. When I was a sophomore in high school, my dad lost his job and my family fell apart. My parent’s marriage crumbled and my siblings drifted apart; my older sister turned to drugs and alcohol. Because of that small thing the company my dad worked for did, my life changed forever. My family was suffering and I worked hard to get out. I graduated high school two years later and decided to leave the toxic environment that was my family home and move away for college. I went to BYU-Hawaii. It was there that I met my best friend Emily who’s wedding I met my husband at years later.
Every “A” I worked so hard for in high school, every hour I worked to pay my way through college, every friendship I made along the way led me to where I am. In the moment it was just another day of class, just another dead-end job, just a small thing. Those small things turned out to be laying the ground for the greatest thing yet: meeting my sweetheart Jake.

Taking this scripture into the context of my marriage I wonder, how am I ensuring the small things are bringing about great things? It can be so easy to get lazy as we become comfortable in a marriage. We forget to put in effort to make the small things matter. 
The past few weeks as we have been reading, “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work” by John Gottman, I have been far more aware of what Jake and I excel at and where we are lacking in our relationship. When it came to the Love Map exercises, we surprised each other at how much we knew about the other person. Where I thought we may have been lacking due to our history of not-so-great communication, I feared we would totally flunk the question game; it turns out we aced it! But then we come to this weeks activities of turning toward each other and our expertise was lacking. We recognized our need to communicate better in times of stress and conflict. We are really good at having the fun conversations, but really bad at having the tough ones. Gottman's book and the exercises in it have given us a whole new perspective on our marriage and have given us specific things to work toward, such as communicating better during difficult situations. 

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