Thoughts on a Marriage

Today B-rad and I celebrate 5 (that's FIVE) years of wedded bliss. In some ways, 5 years doesn't seem long enough, and in others, it seems like a lifetime. If someone would have told me, in my senior year of high school, that that jerk Brad who stole my parking space was destined to be my lawfully wedded spouse...well. I probably would have laughed right in their face. If someone would have told me all the things that we were getting into, I'd probably pass out from exhaustion, but if it's one thing I've learned, the graces of this sacrament are real. The graces are what gives you strength.

We've been through job searching and moving to a new city and state away from family.

We've produced two fantastic children and managed to keep them alive and relatively well-adjusted.

We've bought our first house.

We've discovered the joy and the anxiety that comes with a child with special needs.

We've learned that a good marriage is a lot of work. It takes praying together, and playing together, and dreaming together, to keep this beast up and running. And bacon.

It's a pretty incredible thing, to promise to hang out with someone FOREVER, regardless of what kind of crap is going down. Interestingly, I don't think I wish for only happy times. It's the hard stuff that binds you, if you let it. Anyone can stick around while it's good. It's the rough stuff, the hard decisions, the middle of the night baby cries, the job searching, the grocery shopping, the budget meetings, the socks scattered about the house, the never being on time...these are the matter and the form of the sacrament of marriage, behind these things, hidden but ever-present, is the love.

It's been a pretty rockin' adventure thus far, and I can't think of anyone else with whom I'd rather be working out this vocation.