In it for Eternity

"Young Lady!  What did you just do?" I scolded as I walked into the kitchen and saw grape jelly smeared all over the table and dribbled across the linoleum. 

Three year old Linnea was standing on her toes, trying to grab the dish rag in the sink with one hand while holding a dripping butter knife in the other.  She turned around in surprise, dropped the knife in the sink, and ran over to me,  throwing both arms around my legs.

"I love you momma," she looked up at me with a big grin, "and I like you!"

"OK, so  how could I be mad at that?" I wondered as I chuckled and gave her a big hug.  But while I cleaned up the jelly the thought did cross my mind that perhaps we'd read Love You Forever by Robert Munsch one too many times.  On the other hand, maybe Linnea had listened and understood more than I thought when I came home from the Education Week class I'd gone to the night before.

I enjoyed going to whatever family relations, parenting, or marriage improvement classes that I could, and last night had been a particularly good one.  Sheldon had stayed home to watch the kids, so afterwords I told him all about the class.

"One thing the speaker said was we can love somebody but not particularly like them all the time," I'd told Sheldon.  Maybe Linnea heard me.

Life was good at the time.  While having three children under the age of four had it's moments, it really wasn't that much different than before.  After all, I'd babysat big Holly all the previous year before Russell was born, so really I'd already done the three kids thing.  Now I actually had four kids during the day. 

I kept busy cleaning and cooking and sewing and painting and gardening and mowing the lawn and changing diapers.  Our house looked like a big doll house, and I loved when people commented on it.   It faced one of the main streets in town, and I worked hard keeping the yard green and pretty.  Sheldon and I had built a walkway with lights and a planter box out of river rocks in front of the house, and I kept them filled with colorful flowers.  There was a window box under the kitchen window that was also full of flowers, and I put more flowers in pots on the front porch. 

There was always lots to do with my church callings, preparing lessons and going to activities as well as attending our meetings on Sunday, and we spent a lot of time doing things with our families. We always visited both sides of the family and Grandma Johnson on Sundays, and my most favorite thing to do was to be with them.

Keith, my older brother, got married not long after I did, and it was fun doing stuff with him and his wife.  A few years later Phillip, my younger brother, also married, and I really enjoyed doing girls stuff with my sister-in-laws.  We tried out new recipes, did crafts, and gave each other perms, laughing and talking the whole time we were together.

Keith's wife was having a harder time being married than I was.  One day we went out to lunch and she talked to me about some of her concerns.

"How do you do it, having so many kids and being married and everything?" she asked.  "Don't you ever get tired of it?"

"Sure, I get tired all the time.  That's why I'm having so much fun going out with you today," I quipped. 

"Do you ever wish you didn't have to do it?"

"No.  I love being a mom," I assured her, wondering what she really asking me.  "I mean, it's hard and all that, but I wouldn't trade this for anything."

"Yeah, but don't you ever think about how much fun it was being single and wish you could go back to that once in a while?" she persisted.  "I mean, when you could do whatever you wanted and you didn't have to worry about what they wanted you to do?"

I looked at her for a second, not knowing quite what to say.  "I guess it might be nice to do my own thing once in awhile," I finally agreed. 

"I sure get tired of having to do everything," she continued.  "Cooking and cleaning and doing the laundry, then cooking and cleaning and do it all over again.  Does Sheldon ever help you?"

"Not really,"  I laughed.  "His idea of helping is letting the kids watch TV while he works on his train set when I have to go someplace."

"My dad helps around the house," my sister-in-law said slowly.  “He does the laundry and everything."

"Does Keith help?" I asked.

"Sometimes, I guess," she answered.  "You know," she continued in a minute, after taking a bite out of her sandwich, "my dad was married before he married my mom, and he got divorced.  It just wasn't right.  Then he married mom and they've lived happily ever after."

I looked at her in surprise.  I hadn't known that about her parents.

"He says it was the best thing he ever did, getting a divorce.  It gave him a chance to start over and be happy."

"I don't know about that," I said cautiously.  I didn't want to offend my sister-in-law, but I'd never heard of divorce being a good alternative, and I didn't think that it was.

"You know, I heard a speaker just the other day talking about divorce and marriage," I told her.  "He said the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it. His name was Dr. Dobson, and he really made sense,"  I continued.  " I mean, it always seems like everyone else has it easier than we do, but the truth is, we take our problems with us wherever we go.  Just getting a divorce and moving somewhere else isn't going to change us.  We'll still be the same person, with the same problems, just in a different setting."

I could see that my sister-in-law wasn't really buying what I was saying.  "You know," I continued, "when I got married it wasn't just for as long as things are easy and nice.  I promised to stick with Sheldon no matter what, that's what being married means.  Sometimes I may not like him or what he's doing, but I still love him."

"Yeah," my sister-in-law replied, but I could see she wasn't convinced. 

"I heard something else, once, that I remind myself of all the time," I told her, trying desperately to get through.  "Brigham Young once said that if we could just see into the future, past this mortal life to the time when we have learned to be perfect, we would be so impressed with our husbands that we'd drop down at their feet and worship them.  They're going to be that good some day.  We just have to be patient with them now while they're learning how to be who they are going to be."

"Yeah," my sister-in-law repeated.  "I guess so."

I went home that day feeling really sorry for Keith and his wife.  They were starting off with a bunch of strikes against them to begin with.  How could you be committed to your marriage, willing to endure the bad as well as the good, if you had in the back of your mind the idea that if your marriage didn't work out you could just get divorced and try again and live happily ever after?  That would mess anybody up.

It made it easier that afternoon to not be cross when Sheldon was late coming home from work, again, and spent the entire evening working out in the back room on his model train set, ignoring me and the kids like usual.  I reminded myself that I didn't have to like him all the time, but I still loved him, and we weren't in this just for when it was fun We were in it for eternity.  At least I was.