From YA Weekly
How Can I Move Forward on the Covenant Path If I’m Not Married Yet?
When I felt stuck on the covenant path, I moved closer to Christ.
I’m a checklist person. I like making boxes and checking them off.
My checklists come in handy when I need to pack for a vacation, clean the house, or keep track of homework assignments. But making a checklist of my spiritual progress brings me great anxiety.
Because there’s one box I just can’t check off yet: the “Get married in the temple” box.
Because I’m single, it’s easy to feel like I’m stuck between the endowment and sealing covenants. The phrase “covenant path” suggests that we need to get on the path—and then keep moving forward.
President Russell M. Nelson’s (1924–2025) encouragement to “maintain positive spiritual momentum” evokes a similar mental image of forward motion.
But because getting sealed in the temple is a two-person decision, sometimes I feel like I’ve bumped into a locked gate. I worry that I’ll run out of spiritual momentum while I wait for the gate to open. Can I keep moving forward on the covenant path when I can’t currently make my next covenant?
The answer to my fears came by understanding the covenant path a little better.
Moving Upward
When I thought of the path as a checklist or straight line of stepping-stones—baptism, confirmation, initiatory, endowment, sealing—it didn’t feel like there was anything I could do between steps.
But my perspective changed when Elder Dale G. Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles described the path differently: “The best way to picture this process is to imagine a long road ascending a mountain peak. If you view this road from a high altitude, all you see is a flat spiral. However, if you view the road from the side, you see an ascending spiral.”
In other words, living the gospel doesn’t mean going in circles—or even just going forward. It means going upward, toward heaven. Every step forward, big or small, brings you closer to the Savior.
Later, Elder Renlund described spiritual progress as a repetitive and iterative process—living the gospel of Christ over and over, improving ourselves and drawing closer to the Savior with each cycle.
Notice what word he didn’t use: checklist. The gospel of Jesus Christ isn’t something you do once and check off. Discipleship is something you live every day.
And no matter where you are on the covenant path, you can always get closer to Christ. There are no roadblocks to His love.
Closer to Christ
While I wait with hope for a temple marriage, I find strength in the story of Elder Renlund’s grandmother. She lived in Finland long before a temple was built there, so she was never endowed or sealed to her family in her lifetime. Still, she “lived as though she had already made these covenants,” giving her the strength to endure the personal tragedies in her life.
Though I can’t make the sealing covenant yet, I can live as if I already have. I can work on developing Christlike qualities. I can go to the temple as often as possible and renew the covenants I have made by taking the sacrament weekly. I can make my discipleship something I am, not just a list of tasks I do.
Plus, the sealing covenant is unique in that you can participate in proxy sealings before you’re sealed for yourself. I love that I can see and hear the ordinance for myself so I know exactly what the covenant entails, and I love that I can feel the joy of eternal families as I kneel at the altar on behalf of my ancestors. Some of my most spiritually powerful moments in the temple have occurred during sealing sessions.
All these things help me nurture a close relationship with my Savior, which is a precious blessing whether I get to make the sealing covenant in this life or not. Turning toward Him is positive spiritual momentum, and as long as I keep moving toward Him however I can, He will never bar me from His love.