Nine Years Ago

Today is my wedding anniversary. Nine years ago today I married a beautiful, wonderful woman who was slightly insane. (She did choose to marry me, after all.)

Nine years later, I am still married to a beautiful, wonderful woman. And she's still slightly insane. But I love every little bit of that insanity.

She's so crazy she wore sneakers to our wedding!

In the last nine years, I've learned a lot about love. It isn't always roses and daffodils. (Although it probably should be more often. It's been a while since I've gotten her flowers.) (Sorry, SweetSweet.) 

So, if love's not about flowers, what is it about? It's more about complementing each other than it is about complimenting each other. (Although a nice word here and there certainly doesn't hurt.) It takes work to make a relationship successful, but it's the most rewarding work I've ever done.

Sometimes I get frustrated with her. Sometimes she gets frustrated with me. The key is not to let those frustrations linger. The good things far outweigh the few frustrations, so to let the frustrations fester would be folly. 

We have three children. Much of the work in our relationship is devoted to the kids and doing what we can to parent them as best as we know how. It helps that we see eye to eye on most parenting decisions. And when we don't see eye to eye, it helps to back each other up so that we present a united front to the kids.

In fact, so much of our time is devoted to parenting that I sometimes fear I'm taking my wife for granted. I hope I'm not. I need to savor every moment of her amazingness.

My wife is beautiful, wonderful, strong, intelligent, caring, funny, brave, helpful, and incredible! (Looking over that last sentence, it makes it seem like my wife is the perfect embodiment of the Boy Scout Law. It's kind of silly, but she actually is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, thrifty, cheerful, brave, clean and reverent.) (Well, I'm not sure about the reverent. Sometimes she plays Candy Crush on her phone during church.)

I know that I'm a much better person than I was nine years ago, and I give most of the credit for that to my wife. Being around her makes me want to be a better person, and her example shows me how that can be possible. 

Nine years seems like a long time ago. It seems like forever. But, it really is only the beginning. It's the beginning of forever. (And forever is going to be wonderful!!!)