What brings us together is what has been keeping me separated from posting. I feel no shame in that. But how does it do it? Marriage and weddings have such an effect on people. I'm just over a week away from tying the great eternal knot, and I've seen good friends do it recently, as well, and I've observed so much. Young girls giggling uncontrollably when they're all alone or talking with friends about hair, cake, rings and dresses or taking captive their intended man, the both of them becoming dead to friends of the old life they had. I've acted a little differently as well, I'm sure, but it's harder for one to observer their self than others. The prospect of being united with someone you love is a joyous outlook. Weddings are happy occasions, no need to bicker and argue over who killed who. How couldn't someone be so happy? But I'm in a different world right now, for Courtney and I have been engaged under the cover of the great bubble that is BYU, and look forward to a nice day for a white wedding; a nice day to start again. Our engagement is a little different than others in the world, and it seems to me to have quite an effect on the way we are and how we feel right now.
I called a good friend from high school last year and learned she just got engaged to a good man. When I learned the wedding was set for July, I was surprised at how soon that would be. She quickly reminded me that it was next July. Oh. Okay. That works too. It seemed like a long time to be engaged, but things are quite a bit different outside of the bubble.
Courtney and I officially began our engagement March 1st of this year and set a marriage date for the end of August. This was to be a long engagement by BYU standards. A number of my friends got engaged months after us and are already married. The average engagement at the Y is five months, in contrast to a national average of fifteen months. Most bridal magazines suggest a year for the proper planning of the proper wedding of a modern couple. And Courtney thought six months was a long time. So why is it that the engagements are so much shorter at BYU?
Sure shorter engagements may be responsible for more stressed-out bridezillas and a handful of unprepared youngins out on their own before they knew what they were doing, but there is a very reasonable explanation for shorter engagements. And it's not that everyone getting married is a sex-craved virgin who starts feeling immense feelings of intimacy in their first relationship after their two year mission, during which time they didn't even think about talking to any girls about anything other than going to church and reading the Book of Mormon. The average age of men at BYU when they get married is 23, two years after returning from their mission. That's not a very reasonable explanation anyways. The reason is this:
Couples at BYU will most likely be married in one of the church's 100+ temples, wherein the authority of God to seal on earth what will be sealed on heaven forges eternal bonds between man and wife, and extends to the children to be born into this covenant in the future, binding them as well together into their eternal family. This is God's plan for his children, that they receive these great eternally-lasting blessings and return to Him to live with their families in His kingdom. In order to enter the temple, one must be living the standards of the church, and keeping the covenants they made at the time of their baptism. One of these standards and covenants is to live the law of chastity. As soon as a couple commits to each other to be married, Satan will attack them with everything he can to persuade them to abandon their covenants and dirty their hands, to keep them from living worthy to enter the holy temple. The longer the wait, the stronger the opposition.
Yes, it may be harder to plan and organize a highly extravagant wedding, but these couples (including myself and my bride-to-be) aren't in it for the day. We do it for every day after the wedding day. Everything that happens outside the temple is just a celebration and only complementary to the main event, which is the sealing of two souls together for eternity.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said in a stake conference, "If you could be with your eternal companion right now, wouldn't you want to find them as soon as possible?" I could do things the world's way. Courtney and I could have moved in with each other and explored the possibility of living with each other every waking moment before deciding to be married. We could have made a mockery of a holy ordinance by trying to cleave to one another and become one marriage. We could have mocked the powers of procreation given to mortal man by participating in premarital sexual relations. We could have waited until I was done with school to even consider marriage as a possibility. But we didn't. We couldn't; not knowing what we know. We know there is strength in numbers. We know there is strength in the covenants of God. We know that God's laws govern happiness, not because he rewards us for doing silly tricks like abstinence, prayer and prohibiting tobacco and alcohol like dogs doing tricks, but because we know the laws are a prescription for natural happiness and a satisfying life. We love each other and we know marriage will bring us closer to each other and to God. It's progress. It's all about progress.
