It's All About the Cleaving!

“President Spencer W. Kimball, referring to Genesis 2:24, said: ‘She, the woman, occupies the first place. She is preeminent, who are so deal to all of us. Even the children must take their proper but significant place. I have seen some women who give their children that spot, that preeminence, in their affection and crowd out the father. That is a serious mistake.’ We might add that it is a serious mistake for newly married sons or daughters to put their parents in that first place and crowd out the new husband or wife.”

-James M. Harper and Susanne Frost Olsen

I recently had a discussion with someone close to me about some choices they had made in previous relationships. This person explained to me that in their previous marriage, the mother was so involved with her children and their lives, that she left little/no time to be a wife. She was an A+ mother, daughter, employee and friend, but was really failing her marriage. The father was doing very well in his job, in his calling and as a friend, but was also failing as a spouse. He felt that she was putting the kids above him, and she felt that he was always working, so she had to. Eventually choices were made that ended the marriage.

I knew this part of the story already. But what I didn’t know was how nervous the mother was to hurt or leave her children. Her husband wanted to go on trips alone together, but she was always too scared to leave the kids. He wanted date nights, but she couldn’t handle the thought of a babysitter. She loved her kids so much, that she wanted to do the best she could as a mom. After discussing it, her advice to me was to put my husband first.

Genesis 2:24 reads, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

I remember the bishop from my teen years telling us a story about his dad. He said that one night at Sunday dinner, the kids asked the father if all of his family were drowning in the pool, who would he save first? His reply was: “I would step on every one of your heads to save your mother.” Obviously this is a dramatic example and supposed to be kind of morbidly comical, but it has always stuck with me. Spouses come first….always. It’s all about the cleaving!

It can be very easy for us to break the order of priorities. We should put God at the top, then our spouses, then our children, and so on… If this order is broken, things are not working properly. Things don’t feel right, and actually feel really bad when the order has been changed.

When I put my husband in his rightful, and preeminent place in my priorities, things are better. We still struggle with life’s fun puzzles, but we do it together. The best gift that I could ever give my husband is to put his needs and wants above all else. My children are some of my greatest treasures and blessings, but my husband is my companion throughout eternity. He is the one who will stand by my side forever as my best friend. My parents and family are still some of my favorite people and mean the world to me, but they have their proper order in my priorities and they respect that! They are cleaving to spouses, too!

I am grateful for the peace that comes to my soul, to my marriage and to my home when priorities are in their proper order. I am grateful for a spouse that always puts me first, and for kids that see him do it. When the order is followed, we all benefit!