Hafen's Covenant Heart

I am a statistic. I am one of those that got divorced. But that doesn’t define the rest of my life. In his book, Covenant Hearts: Marriage and the Joy of Human Love, Elder Hafen describes a wedding as “the sweetest of time – a day for dreams to come true” and this is so true. Our lives are similar to a three-act play where we have the premortal life, mortality and finally the return to our Heavenly Father if we live a righteous life. In our mortality, we cannot lose sight of the big picture.

This book was not about marriage advice, but rather an eternal perspective about marriage. We are constantly surrounded by the ways of the world and the adversary doing his best to tempt us so that we may lose our way. When we keep our eyes on the big picture, it helps us to make sense of those days that are trying and troublesome! Our happy ending cannot take place without Christ’s part in it.

Sprinkled throughout the book are stories that touched my heart and made me cry. I longed for more stories because I felt good after reading them. I was reminded that relationships should not be about independence or dependence, but about interdependence. In a time when marriages outside the temple are “five times more likely to end in divorce”, we must learn to trust and care for each other in a deep, loyal way.
My ex-husband was one that was “here for a good time, not for a long time.” When you add to that the fact that marriage is becoming more devalued as we introduce same-gender marriage, cohabitation, the children begin to suffer as we are now seeing. As we have learned this semester while studying The Proclamation, gender roles are important and children need both a mother and a father in the home; if that’s not possible (as was the case for me for years), then a strong father figure who is active in the gospel is