From Mission to Marriage

This article refers to serving an LDS mission. If you have not served an LDS mission, it may or may not make sense or be of interest. If you are not of our faith, but choose to read this article anyway, I would love to hear what you learned, so feel free to email me!

When you return home from your mission, it’s easy to feel misplaced. Your rules and structure are suddenly gone, and there is a lot of pressure for you to go back to “the real world.” But you don’t have to. If you did it right, your mission should have changed you for the better, so you should be living better, not like you were before.You should never return to the same movies, music, and so forth.

You don’t have a rule anymore saying you have to exercise for 30 minutes every day, but you probably should. You don’t have a rule anymore saying you have to have personal study for an hour every day, but you probably should. I didn’t have companionship study when I first got home, because I didn’t have a companion yet, but doing an hour of personal study every day made it much easier to go back to two hours to include companionship study when I got married.

These rules are not just for missionaries. These rules are for anyone who wants to keep the companionship of the Holy Ghost as close as it was on your mission.

Study time on your mission was supposed to be geared toward lessons you were teaching. This can and should continue. You may want to work on Christlike attributes as a lesson you are teaching yourself, you might study for a friend going through a hard time, or a lesson you are teaching with your hometown missionaries, and when you are married and have children, you definitely study for them.

In my experience, I don’t remember companionship inventory being a particularly great experience, or even comfortable, even when it was needed. But, in marriage, executive council, or couples’ council as we regularly call it, is perfectly fine. It was maybe harder as newlyweds, when we were so careful not to step on each other’s toes, but over time it became easier. Now, we come together with our list of topics to talk about, and they are almost always nearly exactly the same. Couples’ council is a very needed thing, and I struggle if we even miss one week.

Weekly planning is a blessing too. It generally takes a lot less time than it did on the mission, usually fitting comfortably under an hour. I find that in this new life, and especially with kids that sometimes take a long time to get ready, three events in a day is plenty. When I have three events in the day, it feels like a perfectly full and productive day. You might fit in more if one is small like dropping something off somewhere, but it’s a good rule of thumb.

The one thing that really doesn’t work anymore is P day. With four kids, laundry has to be done every day. But, The principal still applies. Get done what you have to first, and then you have time to fit in everything you need to.

All of these skills along with other things you learned, like how to get along with people, respect, kindness, etc. are very helpful in your new life as a returned missionary. Applying these things in my life has helped me tremendously, and I really think it is what we are supposed to do. The very last piece of advice I have, is to get married quickly after your mission. This is helpful for you and your spouse to keep each other strong before you have adjusted too far.