True, Enduring Love

Those who were paying attention in the Saturday Morning Session of this General Conference may have noticed a particular theme to many of the talks. In fact, three out of the six Saturday Morning Session talks were about  marriage, parenthood, and families, including President Boyd K. Packer's talk, The Plan of Happiness. President Packer's focus on that message is that love that lasts through the ages is sweeter than young love that is yet to be tested:

And if you suppose that the full-blown rapture of young romantic love is the sum total of the possibilities which spring from the fountains of life, you have not yet lived to see the devotion and the comfort of longtime married love. Married couples are tried by temptation, misunderstandings, financial problems, family crises, and illness, and all the while love grows stronger. Mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.

This message flies in the face of many movies, including the old Disney classics like Sleeping Beauty. In Sleeping Beauty, Princess Aurora is cursed with an eternal sleep from which she could only be woken by "true love's kiss." That kiss came from Prince Philip, who had met Princess Aurora no earlier than the day before, and had spent no more than a few hours with her. The idea that true love could be developed in the span of only a few hours is laughable, and Disney certainly poked fun at that idea in their recent movie, Maleficent.

However, the movie in which Disney most clearly highlighted the difference between true love and romantic infatuation is their slightly-less-recent movie, Frozen. In Frozen, Princess Anna is cursed so that she'll soon turn to solid ice unless the curse is broken by an act of true love. It is suggested that a true love's kiss could break the curse, so Prince Anna goes to Prince Hans, whom she had known for only a few hours and whom she had felt an instant attraction to. It's something of an understatement to say that that plan didn't work out. Plan B was to kiss Kristoff, with whom Anna had spent more time and with whom a more sincere relationship was forming. However, if you watch the sky carefully as the movie progresses, you'll notice that Anna and Kristoff had spent no more than a single day together. It is not revealed whether a kiss from Kristoff would have counted as a "true love's kiss" because the curse was ultimately broken by a love more like the one President Packer described, one that had been tried by misunderstandings, hardships, and family crises.

Just as a person grows stronger by facing hardships, a relationship grows stronger when people who love each other face hardships together. Young love is a beautiful thing, but we've been told by one who knows that enduring love is even better. His message was that we should keep ourselves clean, pledge ourselves to each other, and work together to make our relationships last. This, unfortunately, is not always possible, but to those whose marital or spiritual status is less than ideal, President Packer offered these words of comfort:

God is our Father! All the love and generosity manifest in the ideal earthly father is magnified in Him who is our Father and our God beyond the capacity of the mortal mind to comprehend. His judgments are just; His mercy without limit; His power to compensate beyond any earthly comparison.

His love for us has endured through all the ages of the earth, and it is the strongest, purest love the world has ever known. It is at least the equal to the love of Christ, who suffered tremendously and died for us. If any love has ever been true, His is. And the best love we can have for each other is the kind of love He has for us - not the short-term excitement of a storybook romance, but the kind of love that endures.