10 Years

The Hubby and I recently celebrated 10 years of marriage.  Some days I feel like we've been married for 25 years and some days feel like I walked down that chapel aisle yesterday.  I remember meeting the Hubby and within a few dates not being able to imagine my life without him.  I just wanted to be married to him, to have a life with him.  He was everything and more that I had ever wanted in a husband and I could not run down that aisle fast enough to get to him and seal the deal.  There is nothing more magical than those first few dates with the person you're suppose to marry.  It's like you can't quit smiling and you have butterflys in your stomach and are just plain giddy.  You want to spend every second you can with that person, and when you're not together, you are talking on the phone for hours into the night. You are inseparable and have the world at your fingertips.

After time, that newness wears off.  You are learning to live together and make major life decisions together.  Little things that you use to think were endearing about the other person are now just irritating.  You realize that they have morning breath and that they are messy and snore.  You bicker about things that don't matter and live on hamburger helper, because that's all you can afford.  You realize that living on love isn't going to get you very far.

Fast forward a little ways and you start bringing babies into the mix.  It is then that you fall in love all over again.  You have just made a perfect human being together.  That little human takes so much work, but brings so much joy to the home.  You immediately start talking about more kids, you move to the suburbs and hang out with other people that have kids.  The days get longer and the years get shorter.  There's complete chaos.  We created that chaos.  One day you wake up with 4.5 kids and have been married 10 years.  How the hell did that just happen?

This day and age that we live in doesn't value marriage.  It doesn't value family.  I'm not surprised by divorce anymore, I'm numb to it.  I'm constantly asking people that have been married forever, what their secret is?  I get lots of different answers and that's because there isn't one secret to a lasting marriage.  I firmly believe that God has to be the center of a marriage to make it work.  I also believe that you have to spend alone time with one another, laugh together, communicate, trust, forgive and encourage one another.  There are going to be good years and there will be crappy years, but you have to move forward together.

I can honestly say that I love the Hubby 1,000 times more today than I did 10 years ago.  We have built this life together and I wouldn't want to live in it with anyone else.  Our goal in our marriage, over anything else, is to set a godly example of what marriage should look like to our kids.  I would never want our girls to settle for anyone less than what their daddy was to their mommy, and I want to be the wife and mother that my boys will look for in their wives (many, many, many) years from now.  I want our kids to see that our marriage isn't perfect, but that it's solid.  I want them to see that though we may bicker, we always make up.  I want them to see that even when times are hard, we stick together and encourage one another.  I want them to know that even though they will see broken homes all around them, that we won't be one of them. 

I cannot wait to see where God leads us over then next 10 years!