Marriage is hard! Why didn't anyone tell me???

So as of February 2, 2012 I have been married for 10 years!  Let me tell ya, this has been the hardest 10 years of my life!  I remember a time when I was younger, so many people around me seemed to have hard times and trials and struggles and I didn't!  I remember never wanting to have any trials but almost wondering why I had not had any hard times. 

 In my religion ( The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), when we feel we are ready, we can receive a patriarchal blessing. Patriarchal blessings are given to worthy members of the Church by ordained patriarchs. Patriarchal blessings include a declaration of a person's lineage in the house of Israel and contain personal counsel from the Lord. As a person studies his or her patriarchal blessing and follows the counsel it contains, it will provide guidance, comfort, and protection.  (you can read more on this at http://www.lds.org/study/topics/patriarchal-blessings?lang=eng)

I received mine when I was 12 or so years of age.  I have read it thousands of times.  I have seen promises made to me in my blessing that have come to past.  But the one thing that I always wondered about was the line that says, "This will not be an easy life."  I've read that over and over again throughout the years and up until I got married I always thought life was easy!  My life was easy!  I'm not joking when I say it was easy!  I got married when I was 24.  Up until that point, life was great! My parents always did everything possible for me to have a great life.  They did an amazing job! I never went without anything!  I was very well taken care of!  I remember feeling lucky as a child.  Some of my friends and people around me didn't have as much as I did.  I knew I was blessed.  All through my school years I had great friends, that was another huge blessing in my life.  I had friends who made great choices and that made making good choices easy for me.  I love the young women's program in my church.  I love my leaders.  I have amazing influences in my life.  I was very blessed!

My whole life was amazing and easy for so long.  I remember wondering when my trials would come.  I was faced with a few tough decision along the way of life but nothing that took me to far away from my goals.  Just little bumps in the road.  Nothing I would have considered a real trial!  

Then comes marriage!!!  Like I mentioned before, my husband and I argued over everything but we were madly in love!  We had some major chemistry!  It was awesome and I knew I need to marry this guy!  He put more effort into our relationship than I did.  The relationship I had before my husband, was totally the opposite!  My husband is from California.  When we met I was living in Provo, Utah with my younger brother and sister in a condo.  We loved living together!  We had so much fun during those couple years living together!  Awesome memories!  Anyway, he would drive from southern California to see me in Provo every other weekend!  Now we only dated and were engaged for 4 months total!  So it wasn't like he had to do it very long but I had a full time job and couldn't leave as often as he could.  It was so fun and exciting when he would come to see me.  We had so much fun and spent every hour together while he was visiting.  Except for sleeping of course, we slept in separate rooms!!!

Anyway, on my wedding day, I had a strong feeling to not go through with it!!!  I know,  huge scary moment!  Maybe it was just cold feet, maybe it was a sign, who knows.  Obviously I didn't listen to the feeling.....  I will always wonder what that meant.  This is the start of all my trials and hard times I knew would come eventually!

I know every marriage has issues and problems no and then.  I guess I just don't know how to deal with that!  I think most of our problems are because we are both stubborn and we were both raised completely different.  He has a great childhood and he has lots of wonderful memories like I do but I can't help but think our upbringings play a huge roll in who were are and how we deal with life.  In my eyes we have hard times because he wasn't raised in a religion.  I was raised very strong in the LDS church.  He was not even taught about God or Jesus.   His biological father died when he my husband was 2 years old.  His mom remarried a wonderful man a few years later and he is still alive and has always been a great person and father to my husband.  I'm grateful he had good parents.  His life was just so different than mine.  Not bad or wrong just different.  He was later baptized into the LDS church and served a full time mission, like I did.  So when I met him, I didn't really care about his past.  In my mind, he was LDS and a returned missionary.  Those were huge on my list!  In our church we are taught and encouraged to only date members of our church and marry a returned missionary in the temple.  So I thought sweet this is going to work out perfectly!  Little did I know, those were not the only things that make an amazing marriage.  It's hard!  You have to work at it!

Through our marriage there has been lots of mean things said to one another, lots and lots of mean things!  We have both made lots and lots of mistakes that has hurt the other person.  Trust has been lost.  When we would fight he would do things to get back at me and I have done things to get back at him.  Neither one of us are proud of our mistakes and childish ways of dealing but it's just how it happened.  All part of the trial I guess.

I truly think all my trials were saved up for marriage!   It has been the hardest thing I have ever done!  Then you add kids into the mix and it makes things ever harder.  One thing is for sure, we both love our kids more than life!  That is for sure!  I just wish we loved each other as much as that!  I think we used to......Maybe it's still there somewhere.....Only time will tell.