15 years ago...

Today, I married my friend,

     the one I laugh with,

live for,

     dream with,

                 Love...

This post is all about me...and the one I love.  We married young, really young.  Society didn't give us a fighting chance (our parents always believed in us though!).  In fact, according to most statistics, we should have divorced a long time ago just because we married young.  But, we defied the odds.

We grew up together-both literally (being from the same small town) & in the sense of the real growing up came when we became a young married couple, living together & figuring out our personalities.  We went to college together...our new friends all thought of us as an "old" married couple when we met them just a few years into this vocation.  We grew (& continue to grow) in our faith together-my husband joining the Catholic church after we were married & I was his sponsor.  We took crazy road trips together-one time driving from Texas to California in an F-150 pick-up with NO room to recline your seat!

January 1, 2000 1:03 am

We saw in the new millennium-together, watching with our friends to see if the world was going to end!  Remember that?  All the computer hoop-la drama that really never happened...

In our 15 years of marriage, we have moved nine times (one time moving 5 times within a 6 month period), we have had 4 beautiful babies, 1 dog, 2 little fishies, 5 couches, 10 vehicles (oie!  probably shouldn't divulge that one!), collectively 11 job changes, and more laughter and fun than I could even begin to count.

Like all marriages, we've had our ups and downs, but we have been blessed with less "downs" and for that I give thanks to our God.  We have made a choice to honor those vows-good & bad times, and just not give up, ever.  My life will always be better with my husband than without...

We kiss (much to Macy's dismay!) and hold hands and joke and truly love spending time with each other-he comes first on my list of who I would rather be with or talk to or share with.

I think back to our wedding and remember being scared, very scared-but not of being married or of spending the rest of my life with this person, just of the ceremony, worried that I was going to do something stupid like trip or mess up my vows.  The wedding was flawless...thankfully.

One of the gifts we received was a time capsule and throughout our first year, I saved things from our life-receipts, playbills, ticket stubs, newspapers, etc...and remember sealing it to be opened WAY off in the future, on our 20th wedding anniversary.  My goodness, time has flown by & we are closer to that distant milestone than we are to that first year.  It seemed so long ago then that I couldn't wait to open it, but now, we are almost there & I think I want to wait even longer...maybe at our 25th, or even longer, just to see how much things will have changed.  See, I still feel like we are those two kids, now with our own kids, but not feeling that much has changed.  Reality is...I can see that time has definitely passed when I observe a teen interacting with me.  I'm not young anymore!!  THEY can see it, even if I can't...I get that "ma'am" respect instead of being a cool grown-up.

So, happy anniversary to my husband of 15 years.  Looks like we made...look how far we've come together, I'm glad we didn't listen...look at all the fun we'd be missing.

*family photos courtesy of Cliff Lawson.  Lyrics from Shania Twain.