Thinking of how different things could have been, if I hadn't made the decisions I had, specifically the decision I made to marry my husband in the house of the lord. Anyone who knows me/us, knows we were engaged for nearly 8 months before we were married (not the typical length of an engagement for a LDS couple). (The details of why it took so long do not matter, thanks to the atonement) However, we could have been married civilly in November, on a date that we had talked about getting married, making it a 3 month engagement and then be sealed 1 year later. But, we decided that we wanted to be sealed in the temple no matter how long it took us to get there. We didn't want to take the chance of something happening to one of us before we were sealed or having a child not born in the covenant.
We both had and currently have strong testimonies of the sealing power and of the temple in general. We knew we needed our family to be sealed right from the start, and that it was either the temple or not at all. A lot of my testimony of the temple was because of events in my life where it was questionable whether the family would be together after this life. And that scared me to death. Hence why I wasn't going to end up anywhere but the temple. I'm not sure of the details of Jared's testimony but I KNOW he had a strong testimony of it and heartily agreed that the only place we would marry would be the temple.
We had lots of people ask and wonder why we had/were having such a long engagement, but it didn't matter to me what people said or thought. I knew we were doing the right thing by doing it right the first time.
Thankfully through the help of family, friends, and church leaders as well as leaning on each other for support we made it to the temple. I can't imagine having done it any other way. And I am so very grateful that we made it despite the challenges we had to overcome to get there. It was SO worth it, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Because of that one decision, I know that Jared will be by my side even after death. I have also received SO many blessings, especially from being able to attend the temple.