Our Forever Family

Yesterday was our anniversary, or as Gina and I like to call it, "Our family's birthday." It is hard to believe that we have been married now for twenty two years. Where did the time go by? I was scheduled to volunteer at the Spanish speaking clinic last night and we are planning on going out to eat tonight, but when I arrived for my shift the building was dark, locked and vacant. I was a little miffed as I had confirmed my shift just a week ago and this is the second time they have done this to me now. As I started to drive home, I looked at the clock and had the thought that I could take Gina to the temple and we could do sealings together.

You see, in our temples there are those who have the authority as did Peter to bind in heaven what is bound on earth. There are no limitations of mortality on us. When we were married it was not "until death do you part," but "for time and all eternity." As this authority is not limited by mortality it is able to be offered to those who left this life without having the opportunity to have done so while here on earth. It is the same principle as baptizing for those who have died as described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:29. When Gina and I went to the temple, we kneeled across the altar to each other and the same vows that we took twenty-two years ago were spoken, only we were doing so in the name of a couple that had lived previously. They as spirits still have their free agency and are able to choose whether or not to accept our gift to them. That said, I certainly felt a spirit of love and gratitude in that room and look forward to some day meeting them. We now have something in common, we now share the same anniversary!

Looking in Gina's eyes, thinking of eternity, was a powerful experience. Parley P. Pratt, one of the early apostles who lived at the time of Joseph Smith and whose character was the narrator of our pageant, said the following on learning of this wonderful doctrine, "It was from him [Joseph] that I learned that the wife of my bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal love…I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now I loved–with a pureness–an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling, which would lift my soul from the transitory things of this groveling sphere and expand it as the ocean. I felt that God was my Heavenly Father indeed; that Jesus was my brother, and that the wife of my bosom was an immortal, eternal companion; a kind ministering angel, given to me as a comfort, and a crown of glory for ever and ever. In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the understanding also.”