Dearest Dream Girl

Contributed by: Dawn Salisbury

Dearest Dream Girl,

              We’ll be in love someday, you and I. But I’m not sure I know you now. Someday somewhere we will discover each other.

              I’m fresh from the mission field, still feeling the way only a returned missionary can feel, still floating on memories too new to be dime, and, Dream Girl, I’m looking for you.

              Two years ago I was one of the boys, running the race of popularity-more concerned with sharp styles and good-looking cars than anything else. Along with the few serious moments given to school and study, to quorum meetings and Sunday school, there was all the frolic of the modern merry-go-round. Girls were for fun, not for keeps. If they could dance and had pretty eyes or a cute smile, I had an occasional “case” on them. But marriage seemed a long way off.

Then came the call, the farewell, the field. I was a missionary. There was the humbling realization of my greenishness and the regrets that I hadn’t spent more hours gaining an understanding of the plan of living. I worked and studied and prayed. When new understanding of the precepts of Christ came new determination to live them also came, and what had been a vague inner assurance became a burning testimony. I began tasting what is only a word unreal until you taste it—JOY— an exalted happiness that dwarfed the passing pleasures I had thought of so desirable only yesterday. I began to comprehend the deeper significance of love and marriage and the family. I began thinking serious thoughts about the girl of the future-about you, Dream Girl-wondering, like all who are young, where you were and how I would know you.

I met people. I was startled by their kind of life-by their kind of marriage home. Doors opened, revealing husbands and wives whose faces showed bitterness and disillusionment. I saw neglectful parents and neglected children. I saw a ten-year-old who preferred the gloom of a pool hall to arguments at home. I heard a mother try to explain to her tiny daughter why daddy, who had been drunk for three days, wasn’t home for dinner. I saw a husband and wife treat each other like enemies and their home like a prison. For the first time in my life, I realized that marriage could be misery.

How different was the home of the young Latter-Day-Saint couple I met. Love for each other and for the gospel was in their every act. I saw them hold family prayers even though their “family” consisted so far of only one toddling two-year-old baby boy who asked his mother one day, who was lying pale on the couch, “sick, Mommy?” and when he somehow understood that she was, fell to his knees and began praying for her. I could see the love in that family’s eyes and feel the happiness-yes, the joy in their home.

Before my eyes was the contrast-the contrast between couples who with different attitudes and opposing religions married in the world’s way, and couples who with common ideals and common purposes married in the divine way. I realized now that the advice of the church leaders to marry in the church and in the temple, was wisdom. I knew that it was inspired of God.

And so, Dream Girl, I though of you. You, I told myself, would know what I knew. You would want to share the JOY that would come from walking through life with the Lord at our side. You would want to go to the temple. THE HOME.  You would want to be a mother.

I brought home with me the knowledge that the gospel is essential to true happiness and part of the gospel is YOU.

I don’t want to lose that knowledge, Dream Girl. Because if I do, I will lose everything, my title to happiness and my right to marry you. But now wanting to is not enough. There are things I know I must do and things I must not do. For one thing, I know that association with evil leads to acceptance of evil. The best way for me to remain clean and faithful is to associate with young men and women who are clean and faithful.

And so, I’m not interested in girls who give their lips feely-the girl who is immodest in dress and conduct. I’m not interested in the girl who changes her standards to fit her company—the girl who can see nothing wrong with an occasional cigarette or an occasional drink or occasional immorality. My mission taught me that  lot of what we youth like to call broad-mindedness is evil, and the phrase “just once won’t matter” can be traced to the prince of lies. I’m not looking for you among questionable companions.  I’m not looking for you at shady parties, because, Dream Girl, you’re not there.

You will not be the kind of girl who cares nothing and knows nothing about homemaking. Marriage will brings us face-to-face with the down to earth problems of living. There will be meals to prepare and dishes when need to be washed, clothes to care for, and dirt to battle. There will be budgeting and sacrificing. There will be all the cares and responsibilities of parenthood. Going through the temple is not a magic solution of the problems of life. It is their beginning. That’s why we both must spend some time preparing for the responsibilities we will carry as husband and wife and as parents.

Neither of us will be perfect Dream Girl. But we will love each other for what we want to be as well as for what we are. And when we don’t see eye to eye, we will kneel hand-in-hand and seek the inspiration of the Father.

So there you are—-In My Dreams.

There will not be many tomorrows until we meet. And when we do, I will still enjoy dating and dancing, still laugh with you, still relish good clean fun. But I will sense the inner part of you, too. I will feel your faith, your love for God. I will not be concerned with your popularity as much as with your spirituality, with your face and figure as much as with your ideals and ideas, with your ability to dance as much as with your ability to make a home. I will see you as my future Queen. And I will wonder: is she close enough to the Lord to want a temple marriage? Will she make our house into a home and what to bring children into it? Does she know enough of health and dietetics to care wisely for our family, enough of culture and education to teach our children to love the good and beautiful in life? Can I picture us dreaming and working together, sharing the bumps and stumps as well as the successes? Can I picture us kneeling together in harmony, thanking the Lord for each other? You will wonder about me in the same way. Because we know what we know and feel what we feel, Love and Marriage will be SACRED to us. And if we keep ourselves unspotted from the world, if we prepare of reach other—and if we pray to Him who knows our hearts, we will be brought together.  When the day comes, I will find it easy to love you, Dream Girl, the Lord Loves You.

Hopefully,

Your “Someone”