The moment I knew

Do you wanna know the moment I knew I would marry Kyle?

I had been called as the Ward Activities Co-Chair in our singles ward at BYU.

For the month of November, my co-chair and I had planned a big Friends-giving Feast for the entire ward in our church building.

I was in charge of decorations and costumes for the party, and I had planned to make over 100 paper hats for everyone to wear as they arrived.

As the party day arrived, my committee members were suddenly all too busy to help me cut out, glue, and tape these hats out of construction paper.

Kyle and I hadn’t been dating for super long at this point, but I thought I’d see if he could help me out.

I ran over to his apartment with stacks of construction paper, a few samples, and he immediately set aside whatever homework he was doing to help me out.

I asked him to do whatever he could, and that I’d be back once I took care of a few other things.

A couple hours later, I got a text that they were all done.

It was a big enough task that I knew it had taken him quite a bit of sacrifice to do. He wasn’t just casually trying to be nice to me; he really cared.

The ward party was a smashing success.

But ever since that day, my husband has shown nothing but kindness and love and respect for me when I rope him into doing whatever random project, party, or huge activity I end up being in charge of.

When I was reading The Family: A Proclamation to the World, I read a sentence I know I’ve read many times before, but I took off the last 4 words of it and found completely new meaning.

“Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other”.

If you are married, it’s a solemn responsibility that we have to actively love and care for our spouses.

As life gets even busier and busier than when we were both college students, it gets even easier to let that intentional loving and caring slip by.

Marriage is so important. And our spouses deserve our best, not our leftovers.

And so focusing on loving and caring for our spouses, even when life is busy and messy, will show God that we understand the sanctity of marriage.

Happy Studying!

-Cali Black