Today is our four year wedding anniversary. Pretty cool, huh? If you had asked me four years ago where we would be living and what we would both be doing today I never could have known it would be anything like this. In fact, I had a very different path all laid out in my head - but life throws you some curveballs and your heart pulls at you and takes you off in a new direction and somehow we ended up back in my hometown, working together (which I never could have guessed), in an industry that in a few very short years has given us so much joy and satisfaction and opportunity… it’s a crazy thing, life.

And somehow through all of the surprises and changes we have managed to walk this winding path together. And it isn’t easy…

A challenge, an adventure, a rollercoaster, an exciting time - yes - but easy? - not exactly.

I was talking to a very dear friend last night about marriage and - it’s kinda funny - that on the eve of our fourth year of marriage, I was sharing things that I almost hadn’t fully realized until I said them aloud. I asked Charles if I could get a little personal here and he said to go for it, so here goes…

It all started when my friend divulged to me that she had often wished that her own relationship was more like another couple’s relationship and had many times felt jealous over what she thought another couple shared or, in this case, she divulged “I just wish he looked at me and treated me the same way Charles looks at you.” And the tears welled up because I wish that for her too - and also, because I wish that was true for our relationship and the couples she envied. Obviously, I can’t speak for the marriages of others, but if the past four years have taught me anything it is that marriage is continuous, hard work - and if it looks like someone has it ‘easy’ or they have the perfect marriage/family/whatever - chances are that they are working incredibly hard behind the scenes to nurture that relationship.

I can speak a little to our own relationship today and honestly share that there isn’t a single day that goes by, I don’t think, that one of us doesn’t do something to really get under the other’s skin. And it’s can be as big and as little as a towel on the floor or an empty roll of toilet tissue left in the holder. And we all have that.

Charles and I have the added challenge of working together. heh. Don’t even get me started on what a blessing/curse/blessing that can be!

And it’s hard. Did I say that already? Some days you walk through the day thinking ‘is this what we have become? what happened to us?” and you know it’s time to start working at it again because somewhere along the way we both stopped trying. And it’s about the getting back up and getting back on the same page and choosing to fight the world together instead of fighting one another…

Before we hung up, my friend asked me how, in the most trying times in our marriage, I knew we would be able to work through it and stay together for the long haul and I told her that no matter what, at the end of the day, I knew I could trust him with my heart. And that is what it all boils down to for me - the rest is just a lot of work.

So today we are celebrating our journey and all of the battles we have fought and won along the way and we know that when we wake tomorrow we will have to begin the work again - because that is what we will have to continue doing to make it back here again for year number five