Hello everyone. Today is my fifth wedding anniversary. Wow. That five years came quick and yet it feels like I’ve been married for so much longer. There have been a host of good times in my marriage, and more than a few rocky, painful, and uncomfortable moments as well. If I’m being honest, and I definitely try and keep it open and transparent with you all, there were times that I didn’t know if my husband and I would see number five.
Marriage is different. So many people come into it with these great ideas of what it will be and how your life will be, and sometimes it’s nothing like that at all. My husband’s family structure was two-parent household, currently married almost 48 years (July), with eight children, and a dog. The parents worked hard. Their mother left a lucrative career to become a homemaker and was more than blessed to be there for her children. Their father worked outside the home many, many hours providing for his family. My upbringing was different.
My great-grandmother raised me, by herself, with influences from my loving uncles and aunts, and weekly calls and summer visits from my mother. I saw examples of marriage, but saw independent, strong, can-do women much more. I didn’t even think I’d get married. I think more than one in my family thought the same.
When my husband and I married, we went through the growing pains of each learning what it meant to be husband and wife. Heck, we’re still learning. Sometimes, it’s an awesome lesson filled with such love and compassion and patience. Sometimes it is quite the opposite with one or the other retreating to some solaced place in the home to spend time alone while we nurse our perceived wounds.
Add to that dynamic the stresses associated with infertility and medical issues, and things can get crazy sometimes. (Just being real). But every single time that I get to a place of frustration, every time I get to a place where my prayer is “Nope, God. I’ve done what I can and I’m done”, God reminds me of His grace and the extension of it to me when I haven’t been exactly loving to Him. He then shows me that I’m not always a barrel of sunshine either (gasp!).
I took very seriously that I am married for the long run. I still do. The good times where we celebrate adoption and the academic successes of our son, the times where we celebrate pregnancy. Those are easy. The bad ones where our communication is such that we don’t speak for fear of saying the wrong thing, where we say the wrong thing, or it doesn’t come out right. and the just blah..where we don’t know what we are doing.
I find in the five years that my husband and I have been married, we have grown. I still love him. I still think he is handsome and love to see him dressed in a suit. I still love to see him interact with our children. I still know him to be a man of God who wants to follow Him without exception. I will be right by his side assisting as I can.
My husband is still the man I want to share my most intimate thoughts with. He’s still the man I prefer dining out with, the one with whom I want to watch Walking Dead and Z Nation. He’s the one who I do fantasy football leagues with when truthfully I could care less about the points unless my team is playing. He is the one I want to grow old with in happiness and love. I still choose him..five years later and I ALWAYS will. Love you, S.
