Marriage is by nature a covenant, Not just a private contract one may cancel at will.

This earth is not our home. We are away at school, trying to master the lessons of "the great plan of happiness" so we can return home and know what it means to be there. Over and over the Lord tells us why the plan is worth our sacrifice - and His. Eve called it "the joy of our redemption." Jacob called it "that happiness which is prepared for the saints." Of necessity, the plan is full of thorns and tears - His and ours. But because He and we are so totally in this together, our being "at one" with Him in overcoming all opposition will itself bring us "incomprehensible joy."

The deep hurt is the mirror image of the deep joy that still awaits you.

Joy is not an alternative to opposition; it is part of a compound that includes opposition.

Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we can learn from our experience without being condemned by our experience.

Life is a school, a place for us to learn and grow. We, like Adam and Eve, experience 'growing pains' through the sorrow and contamination of a lone and dreary world. These experiences may include sin, but they also include mistakes, disappointments, and the undeserved pain of adversity. The blessed news of the gospel is that the Atonement of Jesus Christ can purify all the uncleanness and sweeten all the bitterness we taste.

Each of us will taste the bitter ashes of life, from sin and neglect to sorrow and disappointment. But the atonement of Christ can lift us up in beauty from our ashes on the wings of a sure promise of immortality and eternal life. He will thus lift us up, not only at the end of life, but in each day of our lives.