I sat in front of this computer for hours being lightheaded and using all of the brain juice that I could use before my Missionary Preparation class this afternoon. I've thought about this a great deal ever since coming home from my mission and I never thought that I would making such a huge decision sooner than I expected.
After much prayer, pondering and fasting, I've done the things that I invited my friend in France to do. I told him, with your many options, write down the qualities that you've noticed, liked or learned about your potential choice, then ponder and pray about each one. I've prayed about this friend before, and it felt right, good. I thought he was going to be the one since I never had options to begin with and we knew that our conversations were going somewhere, but it didn't feel right to draw a line that time. So I was open to other options.
Well, best friend came. After 3 months of less-activity, he FINALLY came back to church with some visits with friends and me trying to pull him back into the fold. The progress was fast as we talked more about the gospel and about the Atonement, then the next thing happened, dating in the temple, spending time as much as we could, and the feeling that I am right where I needed to be. No "you have to be more patient". It was just right.
Having this other option in some way troubled me and I didn't want to make the wrong decisions. I've prayed, pondered, fasted, read the scriptures, read teachings of the modern prophets, asked friends of the same standards, asked younger friends what they thought, the whole stake became in it (in an indirect way and because it is through them that things intensified). I wrote down the qualities that I could compare between these two friends and then with all of the guides that I have gathered, I made a final choice.
It was and always will be the most difficult choice that YSAs would face and make especially in these trying times that standards and moral values are becoming lowered and less important. We need to find worthy spouses that could take us to the temple and be with us through thick and thin for time and all eternity. In order to do that, you have to be comfortable and to trust your to-be-spouse in all aspects (whether or not you are married or still in the courtship stage). People don't really change in marriage, the either become better or worse in the qualities they possess. I see marriage as a mission, and a greater mission at that.
In closing, I just wanted to share a favorite quote said by Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Seventy regarding finding (or choosing) and Eternal Companion:
"Your success in marriage will depend largely on your ability to focus on improving yourself, rather than trying to reshape your spouse. It will depend more on being the right one than finding the right one. There is greater power in giving than in getting. Pure love “seeketh not her own” (1 Cor. 13:5; Moro. 7:45). The Savior is wise; His wisdom is beyond ours. We should trust Him. He is never wrong.
^_^'In selecting a companion for life and for eternity,' said President Kimball, 'certainly the most careful planning and thinking and praying and fasting should be done to be sure that, of all the decisions, this one must not be wrong. In true marriage there must be a union of minds as well as of hearts' (1976 Devotional Speeches of the Year, 144)."