anniversary

Y’all know I’ve been radically absent.

Not a peep in 2022 besides the one cancer anniversary post.

I have a New Year post in my head which maybe will get posted when half the year is over.

But there are a few days I write. Always write.

Today is one of those.

My marriage turns 16 years old today. Happy sweet 16, Vincent Marriage.

Over the years, I’ve written different messages. Here on the blog and in a little book I keep just for Bray and in cards and on social media.

We’ve had crazy hard years and sublime years. Good marriage years that were bad everything else years and vice versa.

We were all joking around after dinner a couple of evenings ago, because there’s another school dance coming up tonight, and little bit was listing what she wants in a husband. Thankfully, she started with the fact that she wanted him to be a Christian but it was quickly followed by being a cowboy, funny and hot!

Ha! Well, I quickly retorted, I got lucky because your dad is HOT! I still think he’s hot over 18 years after I met him.

They of course went on about how gross we are.

This makes me enormously happy.

I still love to kiss him every single day. He makes me laugh. He deals with my utter and complete insanity – seriously I’m a very structured control freak that he manages to live with every single day. And still be relatively sane.

We’ve survived triplets and cancer and hurricanes and job losses and transitions and aging us and everyone around us and now three middle schoolers in the throws of all that is middle school.

But this year comes with some trepidation for me too. It was in my parents 16th year of marriage that it exploded. Big exploded. With all the collateral damage that comes with a big marriage breaking apart in a small town with the charismatic preacher. Financial ruin. Extended separation between kids and parent. Moving across states.

I was 12.

So it would be a total failure on my part if I wasn’t evaluating what all that means for me emotionally in this 16th year of my marriage when my kids also happen to be 12.

One of the things I did was I talked to Bray about it. And I’ll keep talking about it. Because we’re actually better communicators now than we were even five years ago. Saying something out loud helps me to keep from worrying or obsessing about it.

We’ll keep doing the things that are good about our marriage. We still go on dates. We still kiss and say I love every single day. We’re more honest about what’s happening in the kids lives and in their circles than we ever were because the implications are greater now.

We mess up all the time too. I’m pretty spendy and he’s a saver so you can imagine those discussion. While we have navigated those differences (and some other really big political differences) over the years, we have to keep talking about it before it turns into a painful fight.

But mainly, on this gorgeous May 6th, when I look back at the years we have fashioned a life together, I’m overwhelmingly thankful. Thankful to still be in love, to have made it to our sweet 16, and to have so many adventures to look forward to over the next 16 years.

I love you babe.

Fifteen years.

Well, this one has been a doozy.

Global pandemic.

Two hurricanes hitting the farm.

Work at feverish pace.

Cancer.

Still. We got from Year 14 to Year 15 intact. 

It’s curious this marriage thing. 

One year can look entirely different from the year before.

That’s particularly helpful to remember if it was hard year. 

But this marking of years, these anniversary celebrations, are important.  These big circles on the calendar say, “You did it! You two, working together, hung in there and helped each other and invested in your family. No matter what hit you, you two are still standing.” 

I reread some of my earlier anniversary posts this morning.  You know, I used to label the years. 

I don’t know if I’m wiser now or life is just more nuanced, but I don’t have a catchy one liner to sum up what God has done in us and for us over the past twelve months. 

But those words from years gone by still ring true.  I remember how hard year 7 was when I penned: Don’t let the circumstances of the NOW fool you into thinking this will be your circumstances in the LATER.  Every day is a new opportunity.  

On our ten year meeting each other anniversary, I wrote a remembrance, and concluded: You have been one-quarter of my life. But it feels like all of it. Like you’ve been who I needed my whole life. And he has been.

I’ve tried to be honest. To write about how I make mistakes and try to learn (and I still have so far to go).  Year 9 I recapped some of that with a story with this moral: Hanging in there through the tears and triumphs teaches us how to spot our own relationship weaknesses.  Sticking it out through the best and worst of times makes you a better person.

This is what has been true.  We show up.  It’s messy and beautiful.  Hard and then easy.  Awesome and then not remotely awesome.  Our kids turn twelve this year.  That’s the age I was when my parents divorced.  I don’t attempt to rewrite what their story was but it informs how I live my story. 

Showing up.  He shows up and I show up with our flaws and our imperfections.  Some days we’re a little more present than others. In year 12, it’s what struck me too: He shows up. Every day.  On the days I’m good and charming and encouraging and amorous and funny.  But he still totally shows up on the days I’m sad or losing my temper or sarcastic or inconsistent. And now, three years after I wrote those words, they are still completely true.

I know it’s not true for everyone. I know so many have felt the heartache of leaving or having been left or someone taken too soon. This just makes me all the more grateful to be standing here on this fifteenth May 6th.

I’ll end with the line from the classic 10 year anniversary retrospective blog post, it’s just as true today: And my prayer is that I’ll still be writing all the new things I love about him at 20 years and 30 years and 40 years.

Happy Anniversary Babe! Here’s to the next 15!

Today, our little marriage turns 14 years old.

I used to classify our marriage years by a word or tag line.

That’s gotten harder over the years as the years get more complicated. There are high highs and low lows. There is great joy and sorrow mixed in together.

Some years, are more defined by one thing than the other. The job loss year, that decade mark. The Hurricane Harvey year.

Well, you might imagine what this year will be most remembered for.

The coronavirus.

But it’s silly really because there was a huge swath of the year that had nothing to do with this quarantine and economic recession.

We celebrated the kids turning 10! That’s right, our marriage survived TEN years with triplets!

We had a wonderful holiday season where our marriage was in one of the best places of its tenure.

After the New Year, we had a really terrible couple of months which we bounced back from but only just before we left for Spring Break.

We had a wonderful family vacation.

We had a couple’s getaway while the kids were at camp.

14 years and counting.

We still live in the same house that we moved me into after our honeymoon. Crazy really given all the houses I lived in growing up.

We’re at the same church. The kids are going to the same school now for four years. We have friends and jobs and health. This wasn’t a year where we found a hole in my brain or we went through brutal fertility treatments. We still have all our family members with us.

Marriage is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you newly engaged couples any different. But it is absolutely worth it.

I love Bray so much. More than I knew possible when I told him I’d love him ’til death us do part’ all these mornings ago.

It stormed the morning of our wedding. Brutal ugly storm. But by the time we were standing at the front of the church with a sanctuary full of family and friends the storms had moved off and the sun was shining.

A foreshadowing of the years to come.

Apart and together. Storms and sun.

We did good baby – I can’t wait for the next 14 years. Really. I’m not just saying that. I can’t imagine anyone else I’d rather do “all this” with than you.

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Thirteen years ago, I married Bray.

This extraordinary man who built a home and family with me over these years.

The one with whom I have traveled from Canada to Hawaii and from the farm to the ranch. Who I fought with and made up with and faced health scares with and attended hundreds of kids sporting events with and kissed goodnight for thousands of nights.

He is utterly imperfect as am I and our kids, but we fight to make our family work and we love each other fiercely.

The caption on the back side of our wedding thank you notes read, John Deere Republican, Urbanite Democrat, Newlyweds. Politics have changed in the world around us over these years and we’re no longer newlyweds, but we’re still salt and pepper. Completely different but strong together.

This year, our kids are nine.

We’re in our 40s. That oh-so-busy-season.

Our parents are all in their 70s and we’re so thankful the kids have these grandparents who love them and teach them things.

We have all our extended family and a bevy of incredible friends that feel like family.

I learn more about this man every year.

I still dream about kissing him when I’m away.

And while I have no idea what this year holds, a fact for which I am grateful, I do know I get to find out with him. We have a front row seat to see it unfold together.

I pray that 13 years from now, it’s still his green eyes I see first thing in the morning and his hand I get to hold walking down the street.

I can’t even imagine it, that day in the future 13 years from now when the kids are no longer under our roof and who knows what we’ll be doing with our days, but he is the one thing I see there.

My fixed point on the horizon.

12 years.

As the years pass, and I write a new anniversary post, I wonder how to capture the year gone by.

We celebrated 12 years of marriage. At the end of this year, we’ll have been together 15 years.  A third of our lives.

This was a good year.

An uneventful marriage year. But only uneventful marriage-wise.

We survived the surreal Hurricane Harvey in the fall. It upended our “routine” for quite some time, but nothing like those who are still without a home.  It also resulted in a new job for Bray.  This second grade year for the kids was also the first year both Bray and I worked and did not have a nanny.  Talk about a marriage strain.  I had a health scare.  Little bit had surgery.  We had ups and downs with the kids and with each other and with our jobs.

But still.

12 years came.

With no fanfare.

The five of us spent the weekend in Horseshoe Bay, so our Sunday anniversary celebration consisted of breakfast at Mockingbird Café, a long road trip, and a good bottle of champagne on our back patio after dinner while the kids watched t.v.

I went back and read my anniversary posts. I love Year 10.  Not only was it a good, hard but good, marriage year, but it reminded me of where we’ve been.  And where we’re going.

Do you know he makes coffee the night before so we’ll have fresh coffee when we wake up? Even when he’s wiped out.  He makes coffee.  Even when I heckle him because I didn’t like that bag of beans or it came out too strong.  He makes coffee.

I love so many things about marriage. And so many things are crazy hard about marriage because, you know, we’re two totally different people.

But that coffee every morning. Man, that is the best illustration of our marriage.

He shows up. Every day.  On the days I’m good and charming and encouraging and amorous and funny.  But he still totally shows up on the days I’m sad or losing my temper or sarcastic or inconsistent.

I remembered a sad story from my childhood on Thursday night. We were lying in bed and I was thinking about this super hard thing my best friend is going through with her husband.  And I told him this story, tears leaking out of my eyes, lying next to each other in the dark.  Honestly, I don’t think I’d remembered this fight between my parents since it happened over 30 years ago.

Then I said what I believe right now at this 12 year mark to be utterly true. It’s not easy.  And we don’t have a perfect marriage.  But after watching my parent’s marriage struggle and then fail, and after seeing the savage attacks and fallout in friends marriages, I am profoundly grateful.  I am thankful my children see us love one another.

We love our little people fiercely. And love one another.

We say I love you, every day. And kiss each other goodbye.

I do not take one more anniversary for granted. God has given us more than could have asked or imagined. (Eph. 3:20)