Along with having the church in my life, it's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Couldn't have asked for a better girl.
First of all, everyone's story on getting married (or not getting married) is different and what I say will not apply to everyone, but here's my story. President Hinckley helped me get married.
When I was at BYU I would listen to books and talks written by the prophets and apostles. Two different talks/books given by president Hinckley mentioned families. One in particular really touched me. He told the story of a couple from a small town. She was somewhat wealthy, he was poor, but he worked really hard. They ended up falling in love and living life together. President hinckley knew them and ran into them again later in life on a plane. She bragged about her husband and it was obvious she loved him. Also, they talked about all of their kids, who were happy and if I remember right, faithful church members.
Previous to listening to this story, I would pray that "God would make my wife spiritually known to me". In other words - "God, when she walks into the room, let me know it's her." I don't think that's a wise request for many reasons.
Then, after this story, I started to pray to have a family. Also, I just prayed that I would take steps towards having a family, and I just wanted him to help me take those incremental steps, whatever they were (because after dating as many people as I could after the mission, I wasn't any closer to finding a wife or knowing how to find a wife). So I was a little more humble, and I think I had a better desire (to have a family).
I met Jamie a couple weeks later and was married less than 6 months later.
The only other comment - about this same time I came up with this theory that your experience in seeing people's progression through meeting the missionaries until baptism on your mission was going to be a "type" of the way your meeting your spouse and getting married experience would be. Truthfully, this is clearly not the only way things happen. However, in my case it isn't far off. My experience was that the key was just meeting prepared people where the timing was good for them, and then the process would happen very quickly (generally a matter of many weeks, not many months). That's what happened to me with Jamie as well. We met Nov 19, then I told her I loved her about 3-4 weeks later, and we talked about getting married on Dec 22. We actually got engaged in early Feb.
Very quick, but in some ways my mission got me comfortable with that process.
So, go on missions :)
As I said, I'm not sure everyone's mission is a type of their marriage process, but I do think that life's experiences affect future experiences and prepare you in some ways for the future. (Consider Ammon and his brethren's past and how it helped them as missionaries; or consider any of the Apostles/prophets' lives and consider how important some of those experiences were and how they are affected in the future - for instance, do you know who was instrumental in solving the problem of having multiple languages in the same room for a temple endowment? Gordon Hinckley - the solution was have film and then you could have headphones - he recorded the first film version in the 50s before he was a general authority; this was for the Swiss temple - Do you think that helped him consider other ways to address new challenges for temples, such as the need to build more all over the world that were less costly?)
Sorry for limited doctrine. I should use some more scripture examples....
By the way - read a story yesterday about a visit Elder Bednar made to a stake conference. If I'd written a blog post on a visit by a different Apostle, I would have said nearly the same things (in fact, this sort of experience made me do my first blog post because Henry Eyring had an incredibly powerful message :). They're incredible men, and they teach in ways no others do. The most articulate men I've ever met don't have the same power and force and don't make me feel as good as the General Authorities I have listened to.
LaDon
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