Contemplations of a Mommy "Monk"

What is true love? I think my beginning understandings of love didn’t really happen until I had been married 3 years. For about the first three years, I still had stars in my eyes and I was really just living in “infatuation” instead of living in the hard reality of true love. Around the third year of our marriage, the perfect image I had for our marriage had begun to fade and I started to see things through a different light. At the end of each day, which was filled with teaching teenagers, grading papers, planning lessons and juggling a little baby girl’s needs with my own, I found it easier to criticize my husband for anything I felt he was lacking. It was around this time that I began to learn the importance of acceptance and affirmation in a marriage. I used to sometimes judge my husband because he wasn’t like the typical “seminary” student. He was uncomfortable in a suit and tie and it didn’t bother him to drink the milk straight from the jug or put his shoes up on the coffee tab...