For marriage, for the Gospel,
Todd Capen
My mother was the first to model for me deep virtue in relation to marriage. It happened when I was pleading with her to join a group of adults and go out on the town and have some fun. My four siblings and mother were in the harbor of Yokohama, Japan having just arrived by ship. My father had this crazy but amazing idea – he arranged for his family to join him in Taiwan as he did master’s degree work on Taiwan’s educational system. We would travel by ship across the Pacific and eventually join him in Taiwan. It was a passenger-freighter that carried about 40 adults. Upon arrival in Yokohama the adults were making plans to go out on the town. My mother, traveling without her husband, decided to stay with her kids. I pleaded with my mother that she should join in and that my sister, at 20 years old, could watch the kids. She explained to me that it was not appropriate for her to be out with other adults without my father accompanying her. I couldn’t understand this. What she modeled for me was that she lived in vital connection with her husband. She was her own person but she thought of herself as really married even if my father wasn’t present. My mother’s best joys in life were with her husband. To this day she reflects on what a man my father was to her and his family. My father passed away in 2004 but my mother, to this day, still lives as if she is married to him. The connection between the two of them lives on. The adults went out for a night on the town and my mother hung out with her children on a ship in Yokohama harbor. That night in Yokohama she lived before me as a married woman. The Dan Zink Marriage Conference is offered to help all of us grow to have a vital connection with our spouses.
For marriage, for the Gospel, Todd Capen
2 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
May 2017
|