Ulysses S and Julia Grant
After stepping down from his second term in office as president of the United States in 1877, Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia, took a long trip to Europe. He wanted to see the sights and experience the places that he had long desired to see. After a very difficult second term where a lot of corruption and graft was uncovered taking place among his most trusted advisors and friends, he just wanted to get as far away from it as possible. President Grant was like most honest and virtuous men, he thought everyone else was like him. He was blind to the dishonesty and deceit of others, simply because he couldn’t conceive of it in himself.
Ulysses and Julia departed from Philadelphia in May of 1877, two months after President Rutherford Hayes, his successor, was inaugurated. They arrived in England to a surprisingly enthusiastic and welcoming crowd of well wishers. They were invited to come and stay at a number of estates and castles where they were feted quite lavishly. After traveling around England, Scotland, and a trip to France and Italy, President Hayes sent a US Navy ship, the USS Vandalia, to convey the Grants on a “leisurely winter Mediterranean cruise to Egypt”.
The second officer of the Vandalia, Albert Caldwell, wrote his impressions of the former President in a letter to his family, grumbling, “We are to take the great ringmaster about the Mediterranean; it has cost me much annoyance and trouble already and I am in hopes that his money will give out before he gets to Cadiz.” It seems Second Officer Caldwell was not looking forward to pandering to the whims and eccentricities of puffed up, as he believed, demanding, and self important VIP’s.
Within a month his opinion of Grant would change dramatically. In a later letter he wrote, “My opinion of old USG has changed wonderfully — he is as pleasant and jolly as can be and I can see now how he had friends who stuck to him through thick and thin.” And then Caldwell writes something remarkable, “One thing that make me like the whole party is the affection existing between them—the Boss (Grant) and Jesse (the Grant’s son) are as kind and attentive to the mother as if she were a sweet girl of 18 summers.”1
What makes this statement remarkable to me is the surprise one man would have that a middle aged couple would still have such love and affection for each other after being married for almost 30 years and after having lived through and experienced so much notoriety in that time, and been elevated to heights of power and social standing. It occurred to me that Caldwell was surprised because it is not such a common thing to see that kind of devotion between husband and wife after so many years of marriage and in families of status. There was another incident reported while Grant was still president, where one of his cabinet members visited the White House one day during working hours to discuss an important matter with the president. He found the president and his wife sitting in their family room, close to each other holding hands. When they saw they were being observed, they quickly pulled their hands away from each other. (In that day and age public displays of affection (PDA’s) were considered low class). Apparently it was a common thing for President Grant and his wife, Julia, to spend time together in the middle of the day while he was president.
I have thought about how rare it is for this level of love and tenderness to exist between husband and wife after decades of marriage, or even only a few years of marriage after the honeymoon period has past. I wonder how many marriages develop into marriages of convenience, couples feeling trapped because of finances, duty, or children. Or, how many couples take each other for granted and find they are just “comfortable” with the way things are, not willing to expend the effort to evolve their partnership into something that other people observe, admire, and praise. How dismal it seems to me to live life without experiencing a truly loving marriage. The dictionary defines “bliss” as, “A cause of great delight or happiness“. I think that is an apt description of what marriage was meant to be.
As I think back a decade or two, I can see myself taking my wife for granted. I loved her, but took her for granted, and was occasionally critical and judgmental. At one point I recognized that If I wanted our marriage to be more than it was, I had to change. Me, not her. I tried to change my attitude, but she would do something to irritate me and the resentment and judgement would rise up in my feelings..
One night during prayer I had the thought to pray that I might see Nancy as the Lord sees her. I hoped that maybe if I was given a burst of Christ-like love I could change my attitude and behavior towards her. As I prayed the words, an image came into my mind. Brief and fleeting, but wonderful beyond description. I saw, what could only be described as, a brilliant shining angel in my mind. The image and brightness of her beauty astounded me. I was made to understand that was the spirit of my wife, and I thought, I can’t believe I am married to her!
I told Nancy about my experience. It changed our lives.
(I hope you can forgive this very personal account, but I wanted to make a point about the limitation of our memories, sight, sound and emotions that is available to us in this less then perfect world.)
I still feel some annoyance with my wife occasionally, and I know she experiences the same with me, but the memory of that image brings me back to a sense of awe. Awe is a superlative that is not out of place here. I also know that some reading this post might think this is really sappy, but I am not ashamed to admit that I am in love with my wife. It has taken a while for me to realize her true value.
I have come to believe the number one item we will be judged on in this life is our relationship with our family, and primarily with our spouses. Everything else doesn’t really matter because all the qualities that heaven looks for in exalted beings is encompassed in the relationship between husband and wife. When the angels observe a marriage that is worth preserving they act in whatever way they can to preserve that marriage and to promote it so that it remains throughout all eternity a bastion of love and nurture through which families of worlds and universes can be nourished. It is that rare of a thing. The Heavens don’t take notice until the angels observe a husband and wife acting together with humility, gentleness, and real love towards each other.
You really don’t know the person you marry. During courtship people are always on their best behavior, may even be play acting. You don’t see her in the morning before she puts her makeup on. You don’t experience him when he comes home from a stressful day at work. You lose the obvious, or not so obvious, character flaws in a haze of idealism, and when the flaws start poking out after marriage, you react to them in such a way that begins to cause friction.
There are situations where a marriage needs to be dissolved because of the iniquities and sins of one of the partners. To say, however, “we aren’t compatible”, I think, is not valid from heaven’s perspective.
When it comes down to it, it doesn’t really matter who you marry. I mean it does on some level, but what heaven is watching for is how two different individuals can create a loving relationship, and become a single entity, that can endure and create the environment in which eternal lives can be created and thrive. The person you see in front of you, the one that you once loved passionately but perhaps now take for granted or may even look upon as a burden, is not the soul you think she is. She is only a shadow of her real self. If only you could see her as the noble glorious spirit that she really is. The challenge that faces you is to turn a marriage that perhaps has gone a little stale into one that the Holy Spirit of Promise will come to you both and seal the promise of an eternal life together. I don’t think it matters if you are a president, a prophet, or a saint. If you don’t have the ability to create that kind of love in your home, at some very important level, perhaps the most important, you have failed.
There is another reason for men to prioritize their marriage and give your wife a reason to love and cherish you. We men must treat our wives with the greatest of affection and love, because without them we cannot progress in the eternal world. Without their vote, their election of us, we cannot enter into the celestial level. In the second anointing ordinance, which was introduced by Joseph Smith and has fundamentally remained unchanged today according to written descriptions of have of both modern and 19 century versions,2 there is a ceremony where the wife anoints her husband and accepts him as her consort enabling them both to enter into the realm of celestial glory at some point after their death. Without her acceptance of him, there is no progression.3
That second anointing ceremony is based on a true principle. The story of Jacob and Esau is illustrative of the authority of the mother, Rachel, to name the heir to her husband Jacob. Also note the account of Mary in John 12, who took ” a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair…” to which Christ explained was saved by her to anoint his feet in preparation for his burial. This was an ordinance that Jesus and Mary planned to do in public. It is obvious that Mary had a special relation with Jesus. Some evidence exists that Mary was the companion (read wife? consort?) of Jesus.4 In the apocryphal book, Gospel of Mary, Peter asks Mary, “Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember – which you know (but) we do not.”5
The principle that I am laying out here is that men may play the part as holders of the Priesthood in this life, but men only enjoy a continuance, and an adding to the priesthood beyond this life, if the wife endorses and accepts him. Women play the part as king makers as well as life givers in the eternal realms. So, men, you had better treat her like the queen she is meant to be, or you will find yourself in a hard place.
Notes: 1 American Ulysses, A Life of Ulysses S. Grant, Ronald C. White; Random House, 2016.
2 The mysteries of Godliness, David John Buerger, 1994, p.103, and note 91 page 108.
3 http://www.mormonthink.com/personalstories/tomphillips.htm
4 Testimony of John 8:13. “And among those who were present were his mother, and Mary, the Elect Lady who was companion with Jesus. She cut off the seven locks of his hair that had not been cut before because of the vow, which fell at her feet. This troubled his disciples who feared his strength would depart from him but said nothing because Jesus permitted it to be done. Jesus, seeing their concern, asked, Is not a lamb shorn before it is sacrificed? But they did not understand his meaning. And she took royal oil used to coronate a king, containing spikenard, frankincense and myrrh, and applied it to the head, arms and hands, legs and feet of Jesus. And the house was filled with the smell of the royal anointing oil. One of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, who would later betray him, spoke up and asked, Why was this anointing oil wasted instead of sold for a year’s wages of $40,000, and the money used to help the poor? He did not say this because he cared for the poor, but because he was a greedy thief who acted as treasurer for the group, and he wanted to get control over the money. Jesus rebuked him and said, Leave her alone. My mother has safeguarded this gift from my birth until now to be used for this moment. This anointing is required to be done to establish me before I lay down my life.”
5 The Gospel of Mary, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. James M. Robinson,; Harper and Row, p. 525