8 Years and Counting (of marriage)

8 years and counting. It has been a crazy 8 years of marriage and I can't say I'm not looking forward to seeing where we are going. But it has been a crazy ride. In these 8 years, we have lived in 5 different houses and apartments, have been through owning, renting and borrowing, from a cozy size of 500 sq feet all the way up to 1700 sq feet, and we have been in 2 different major metropolitan cities. In these years, I have been able to finish a second graduate degree, serve with two churches and been able to see lives changed. But what changed the most in this crazy journey so far was adding two kids to the mix. I don't think we were prepared nor did we have a true inkling as to what parenthood was. We learned quickly that kids are only fun and cute when you don't have to be the one to change the diaper, fix the boo-boos, and deal with the screaming and crying. Not that I am complaining, I love those two munchins, but I just can't say I was prepared in any sense of the word for them. And with that, we have been blessed to have been able to live comfortably for seasons and to have been carried through seasons of financial hardship. This is all to say, it was a wild journey of 8 years of marriage. And through it all, I can't say I could have picked a better friend, partner and wife to go through this with. We had our difficulties and disagreements at times but with work and communication, we were able to move past it and seek the greater things in life.

I'm not sure where everyone else is at in life but often times when I look around, it seems like everyone has their stuff together. But I think it's OK to not have it all together. Life is an experience. Experience will have its ups and its downs. It is just a matter of how to celebrate the ups in life and how to handle the downs. And the best thing about marriage is that you ain't doing it alone. You have a best friend to do it with. I have seen people that don't want to work at it when they are down 'cause it feels too hard, too bitter, or too distant, and I have seen people that don't recognize and celebrate the highs of life together and allow for mediocrity to settle in. I guess what I am getting at is, if you have someone in your life, don't forget to celebrate the highs with them and work through the lows with them. It is a journey and with any journey you will have twists and turns and occasional ditches or hills.

I don't know what is in store for us as we continue moving on in this ride of ours, but I do know it will have its ups and downs, it will have its times of slowness when everything seems to be dragging and it will have its times of rapid successions of events that we can't keep pace with. But through it all, God has sustained us and He will continue to do so. For the greater things in life brought us together and this greater purpose from God will continue to move us and He will sustain us through.