Ever since I had met David Stone, I had been pleading with my Heavenly Father to tell me if David was indeed the person whom I should marry and be joined to for all eternity. On our first date, arranged over the telephone after a friend of David’s had spoken highly of me, we both sensed that we might have met our future spouse.
A few days before, the two of us had fasted and prayed to know the Lord's will, and although David felt he had received a positive answer, I hadn't. Before he left Provo the day before, we had agreed that we would keep in touch and see how our relationship developed.
I had also been seeking advice from my married sister and a roommate who was engaged. "How did you come to KNOW that you had found the right one?" I asked them. Their answers were essentially the same. They couldn't really explain how they knew––they just did. Sort of like gaining their firm conviction of the truthfulness of the restored Gospel, they told me, they had just come to have a sense of peace and certainty about it.
To my great joy, as soon as I began my prayer that morning, the thought came forcefully into my mind, as clearly as if it had been spoken by someone in the room, "You don't need to pray about that anymore.”
My mind was immediately at peace. I knew that it was the right decision for me to marry David. My heart filled with joy, and throughout the rest of the day, I was walking on air and eagerly telling all the friends I ran into about how I had met the man I was going to marry!
From that day on, I never doubted my decision.
But looking back on it, it seems like a miracle.
With human reasoning alone, there is no way that David and I could have known each other well enough in that short amount of time to sensibly and reliably make such a serious commitment to each other. However, because David was 29 years old and I was 25, we both had had sufficient experience with personal revelation to recognize the voice of the Holy Spirit and to see the wisdom of following a strong spiritual prompting that could bring us longed for blessings with eternal consequences.
Thus, on the anniversary of this special event, even though I sorely miss the physical presence of my eternal companion, my heart is full of happiness and love as I remember the circumstances that brought it about.
That engagement eventually led to an LDS temple ceremony four months later that gave me the promise of a future joyful reunion with the love of my life. Our separation is temporary, and I know that we both have many things to experience and accomplish while we are apart.
The incredible life that I have had in the intervening years came about because of my decision to marry David. All the exciting and enriching experiences I had while living in eight different states and ten different countries on five different continents; all the things I learned as we raised six amazing children and then welcomed equally amazing in-laws and grandchildren into our family; all the wisdom and understanding I gained through decades of trials and challenges, sorrows and joys––they all came to me because of that decision I made long ago.
How grateful I am now, and ever will be, that on the morning of November 8, 1965, I had come to trust that a loving God could communicate His will to me in that simple phrase: “You don’t need to pray about that anymore.”
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