7 Years

In movies you always hear people say 'no one tells you it'll be this hard' -- but honestly, and I've written about it in other areas before, they do. They tell you about college, about parenthood, about life - and they certainly tell you about marriage. People do tell you. But when you're 23 and in love you think all of those trials and struggles will never come to YOUR marriage. Yours will be different.

And you know what? It is. They all are. Each marriage is unique to the 2 people in the union and the marriages that last aren't the ones made of the best people necessarily. They aren't the ones where the couple is extra compatible or never faced hardships or never lost that 'loving feeling'. We have no clue what happens in a marriage, and it's not for us to know. All I know is that the marriages that last are the ones that are true. True to each other and true to themselves.

In church yesterday our pastor made a comparison between the relationship between God and Jesus and a marriage between husband and wife. Jesus said to doubt him or not accept him is to reject the Father because they are one in the same, and it is (or should be) true in marriage too. To dishonor ones spouse is to dishonor that person too, because the two became one. The unity between a husband and wife is one you can't understand without living it and truly absorbing it, and when a husband and wife are in that true union you can't love one without loving the other.

One of the most perilous things I've seen happen in other relationships has been to watch families and friends get in the way of that unity. While they may mean well, and families most often do, to build a wedge or create party lines between a husband and wife is to stand in the way of that oneness. I feel so fortunate that not only have we had a great supporting cast who has loved us and rooted for us all along, no matter how far we've moved away, but in our circumstances we have had no choice but to stand together, on our own, and be one. We have had to forge our own path and in so doing we have found people who love and support us both. Not that it would have gone any differently had we never moved off on our own, it's just one of the benefits I've seen to the depth of our marriage. And one of the greatest assets in truly loving each other more today than we did 7 years ago. 

Here's to 7 more. And 7 more after that. And another 7 when we get there.