I believe that some the hardest decisions in our life revolve around our intimate relationships with others, especially with regards to marriage. There is so much that goes into a marriage and so much at stake if it were to fail that it often seems safer to just try something else. When we do this, though, we harm our chances for happiness as well as our children's chances for the same. Marriage gives our children the best chance to be happy and successful in life. Marriage also gives us access to some of the greatest happiness that we can have on this earth.
I say that these decisions are hard from first-hand experience. I married young, at 19. I had children young, at 20 and again at 22. My husband died a couple months before I turned 24. Now I face the reality of single parenthood and a life of struggling to finish school and find suitable work while raising my children.
The topic of remarriage is being brought up more and more frequently by those around me. It is not a choice that comes easily. My circumstances are complex for any future husband. The risks are greater if my remarriage fails because of my children. With all that I have to consider, I have found the advice from President Spencer W. Kimball to be particularly helpful: "Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage... means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens;but it also means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all" (Teachings).
These challenges are not the same for each of us. They may not even be the same for each person in the relationship. For me, that means giving up some of the control of my life. (I am definitely type A and Being in charge is natural for me.) It also means finding a relationship that will work out with my children. It will mean sacrificing things that I want so that we can have another person in our family, maybe even more than one person. It means letting go of my past relationship so that I can move forward with my life. It means working things out when I would rather walk away. It means not being able to walk away.
It also means having someone to lean on when I can’t go any farther on my own. It means sharing my joys with someone that respects me and loves me despite my faults. It means sharing the greatest losses in your life with someone who will hold you through all of it and pull you back up at the end. Having had these, as President Kimball called them, “deepest and sweetest emotions of all” in my life before, I know how right they are in our lives. They are supposed to be part of our lives. I know that they are worth the risks associated with the possible failure. That’s why people that have been divorced try again.
One of the thought that has been on my mind the most as I have contemplated remarriage is that as we love the Lord and exercise faith in the Atonement, our lives will work out for our benefit. Marriage isn’t meant to be easy. It’s meant to help us grow. Fear of failure is normal but not helpful. It stops our progress. It keeps us from reaching our goals. I have been working on replacing my fears associated with remarriage with faith in the Lord, for I know that through him I can do all things. With Him, we can make our marriages last. We can help them to survive all of the hardships that come to us.
Let’s overcome our fear of failure and reach for our goals of a happy marriage and family. Don’t let fear of failure keep you from trying. We will fail at everything that we never try.
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball (2006), 194.
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