"During these interviews [the prophet Joseph Smith] taught me many great and glorious principles concerning God and the heavenly order of eternity. It was at this time that I received from him the first idea of eternal family organization, and the eternal union of the sexes in those inexpressibly endearing relationships which none but the highly intellectual, the refined and pure in heart, know how to prize, and which are at the very foundation of everything worthy to be called happiness.
"Till then I had learned to esteem kindred affections and sympathies as appertaining solely to this transitory state, as something from whcih the heart must be entirely weaned, in order to be fitted for its heavenly state.
"It was Joseph Smith who taught me how to prize the endearing relationships of father and mother, husband and wife; of brother and sister, son and daughter.
"It was from him 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. It was from him that I learned that we might cultivate these affections, and grow and increase in the same to all eternity; while the result of our endless union would be an offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, or the sands of the sea shore.
...
"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 grovelling 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 as a crown of glory for ever and ever. In short, I could now love with the spirit and with the undestanding also" (Pratt 1938; italics added).
I have decided that I want to live my life so as to be able to love like that. And not only to love like that, but to live worthy of a building an eternal marriage based on this divine, eternal love.
So that's a dream, a hope, and a vision that I have for my future. That is a bit about what is important to me. I'm going to try to live with this vision in mind, and more carefully choose what I do each day, so that I may ever be worthy and ready for these blessings.
Quote taken from:
Pratt, Parley P. 1938. The Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company.
