I'm Tom-- And I'm Joy, and we've been married 57 years. We've been married a little bit over a year. 20 years. 25 years. 40 years. Seven years, eight months, and 13 days. 14 days. 14 days. An expression of love means an act of service, either a phone call or e-mail, or a message on Facebook. A smile. A hug. We're kind of a huggy family. He always opens the door for me. He'll make dinner for us. It just helps us to stay strong, to stay together. That's how I express my love. Sloppy joe, candlelight. Something I really appreciate about him is that he's able to let me see the bigger picture. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." These rocks are an expression of our love. Usually I'm reading one while kids are screaming in the background. We want to work so hard to smooth out all of these edges. Not just a spoonful-- a ladle full of love every day. We always have a lot of humor in our relationship. Yeah. I'd say humor. We both have rough edges. We both need a lot of work We call it teamwork. I have this guy, me, and the Lord. We have a lot of fun together. We all the time, saying, "I love you" to one another. I love her. We promised the Lord that we would do everything we could do to achieve that goal of a celestial marriage. I learned from my wife the importance of expressions of love. I remember one day, I took some of those little round paper circles that you form when you punch holes in paper, and I wrote on them numbers 1 to 100, turned it over, and wrote her a message, one word on each circle. Then I scooped them up and put them in an envelope. I thought she'd get a good laugh.

When she passed away, I found in her private things how much she appreciated the simple messages that we shared with each other. I noted that she'd carefully pasted every one of the circles on a piece of paper, as if they were a valuable treasure. I am confident that when in our future I see her again, beyond the veil, we will recognize that we have become even more deeply in love. We will appreciate each other even more. We want to be together forever because we love each other. It just has to be forever. It wouldn't make sense for us to come this far and have it get this good and then not be perpetuated. I'm glad that I'll be able to have this blessing in my life now and the life to come. Marriage provides an ideal setting for overcoming any tendency to be selfish or self-centered. Don't withhold those natural expressions of love. Express gratitude for what your spouse does for you. Express that love and gratitude often. That will make life far richer and more pleasant and purposeful. Have faith in those promises, and live to be worthy of them.