This Life

Marriage.

Hubbin and I have been together for almost eleven years now. That seems so crazy; I feel myself torn between thinking about how long that sounds, and trying to remember a time without this man. I cannot, and that makes me smile.

I know there’s a lot of jokes about marriage and it being a trap, or how the wedding day is the best day of your life, but I feel like that could not be further from the truth. There are hard times, absolutely; it’s hard to live forever with any one person. Anything worth having takes work.

I was happy on our wedding day, but I would say that today, I am happier. The couple in this photograph have no idea what is in store for them.

weddingThey have no idea that they will face things that take so many marriages down. They don’t know that they’ll mourn the loss of a baby together, and in different ways that will seem to pull them apart. They’ll go through job changes and career changes, and she’ll lose herself for a period of time, but he’ll have faith that she’ll be back one day. They know they’ll probably have a child together, but they don’t know that they’ll have a Charlotte. He doesn’t know she’ll find Jesus, and she doesn’t know that he’ll teach her who He is by the way he loves her.

They look happy, don’t they?

But this couple?

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They ARE happy.

They experience a love they never knew was possible. Their lives may not look like a fairy tale, with the sports and the too small house and the kids and the full time jobs and the commuting and all the responsibilities that go along with those things. They know, however, that they are indeed living the lives of fairy tales.

My love, you will never know the depths of my love and admiration for you. And how today, when you texted me that your life insurance was complete, I may have hyperventilated a little bit at the thought of ever having to use it. I simply could not live without you. And I don’t want to, because I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.

And yes, I can tell him all these things here, and yes, I do. I say them here to show that there is goodness and beauty in marriage that you cannot begin to even dream about on your wedding day.

We had terribly hard things that caused our road to diverge, and we took this path.

And it has made all the difference.