You Think You Love Him Now. Just Wait.

When I was 18 years old, I met the man who is now my husband. At the time, he was 26.

I still remember when he asked me to be his girlfriend. He got down on one knee with a bubble gum machine ring, and I laughed at the weirdness of it as I said yes.

To the naked eye, it probably looked like the beginning of an adorable little love story, but there was background noise.

I was young and so unsure of what I wanted from life. The dreams I had felt out of reach, and mentally, I was struggling more than I knew how to explain. I was trying to figure out who I was while also trying to become who I thought I needed to be, and I didn't always handle that well. There were parts of myself I did not understand yet, feelings I did not know how to name, and choices I wish I could go back and make differently. I carried shame I did not know what to do with, and there were moments when I wondered if he would finally decide I was too messy, too unsure, or simply too difficult to keep loving.

And if I am being fair, there were moments when walking away would have made sense. I wouldn't have blamed him.

But He Stayed

He loved me through versions of myself that I am not proud of and walked with me through moments that were far more complicated than they looked from the outside. And that has always mattered to me.

When I was just shy of 20 years old, we welcomed our first child into the world, and the following year, my husband and I got married.

We had our second child a year after the wedding, so there really was not much time for us to ease into marriage. We were raising two babies, paying bills, figuring out careers, figuring out ourselves, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, trying to figure out how to also be married.

Two years after our wedding, we almost lost our first home. Career changes shifted what life looked like and what we needed from one another.

And then a death in the family forced us to learn how to show up for each other differently, because grief really does change a person.

Life just kept happening, and somewhere in all of it, our marriage had storms of its own.

We loved each other deeply, but loving someone deeply does not mean you know how to love them well. We both made mistakes. We both hurt each other. There were things we did not say when we should have, things we said that would have been better left unspoken, and flaws we tried to hide as if the person sleeping beside us every night could not already see them.

Then, years into our marriage, the roles shifted in a way I never expected. The person who had once extended so much grace to me needed grace in return.

I almost walked away. I even took off my wedding ring and sobbed.

But I remembered what it felt like to be the person who needed grace. I remembered the man who had held my hand when I had given him plenty of reasons to let it go. It didn't erase my hurt or make the situation okay, but it reminded me that a person is more than the worst thing they have done. Years earlier, he had believed the same thing about me.

So I chose to reach for his hand the way he had once reached for mine.

There is so much more tucked inside that season than I may ever share publicly, because some parts of a marriage belong only to the two people who lived them. But I can say this: staying took work. Hard work! Things had to be forgiven and rebuilt, and parts of both of us had to change.

Then came year seven.

We moved into our second home, and just three months later, we welcomed our third kiddo into the world. Once again, life was changing almost as quickly as we could keep up with it. We were settling into a new home while learning what life looked like as a family of five, and by then, it felt like we had spent most of our adult lives adjusting to whatever came next.

Those first years were trying.

But around year eight, something shifted.

Things settled.

It felt like the fog had lifted.

Life gave us a little room to breathe, but I think the bigger change was in us. We had grown up. We knew ourselves better and, more importantly, we knew each other better.

That is one of the biggest things these 17 years have taught me about relationships. You will not remain the same two people who first fell in love. You are going to grow, whether you mean to or not. You can grow in different directions until you barely recognize one another, or you can keep choosing to grow together.

We Chose Together

The relationship we have today is not the result of finally figuring out how to never hurt, annoy, or disagree with each other. Lord knows that is not true. 😂 We still get upset. We still disagree. We still occasionally say something and realize about three seconds later that those particular words probably could have stayed inside our heads.

What changed was how we handle it.

What used to become yelling fights now usually looks like two people taking a minute to calm down and find better words. We learned that not everything has to be solved in the exact moment we are upset. We can pause, give each other space, come back, apologize, explain ourselves better, and actually listen to one another.

We are not perfect at it.

But we are so much better!

And now, somehow, here we are.

This month, we celebrate 14 years of marriage and 17 years together. That is crazy to write and so strange to say out loud. Where has the time gone?

Nine years ago, I wrote that I did not marry my husband because we had a child together. I married my best friend, who just happened to be the father of my child.

And I still mean that with every breath in my body.

He is my very best friend.

The love I have for my husband today feels so different from the love I had for him at 18. It is stronger, but it is also calmer. Safer. There is something beautiful about being completely known by another person, the good, the bad, the embarrassing, the mistakes, the growth, and still knowing you are loved.

I love the man he is now. I love the way he pours into me, our kids, our family, our church, and our community. I love the way he shows up, and after all these years, he is still the first person I want to tell when something exciting happens, when something goes wrong, or when I have some completely random thought that absolutely could have waited. 😂

I know life is not done throwing us curveballs. There will be changes we never planned for, losses we wish we did not have to carry, and seasons that stretch us in ways we cannot predict.

The difference is that I am not afraid of those things the way I once was. Because I am so confident in the partner I get to call my husband.

I have watched him show up when life gets hard. We have been young and broke and scared. We have raised babies, changed careers, grieved people we loved, nearly lost things we worked hard for, packed up one home and built another, hurt each other, forgiven each other, and kept going.

Whatever comes next, I know who is standing beside me.

When I think about my future, I see him in every part of it.

Every single part.

Sometimes he makes comments about how he will probably die before me because he is eight years older, and I immediately cry. He probably thinks I am ridiculous, but even the thought of someday having to figure out this life without him hurts.

To know love this deeply is to know that someday, there will also be pain. If we are blessed enough to grow old together, chances are one of us will eventually have to know what it feels like to miss the other. I hate that thought, so I try not to spend too much time there.

Instead, I Try to Stay Here

I want the ordinary mornings, the drives together, the church Sundays, the dinners, the inside jokes, and the chaos of raising three kids. I want the arguments we work through, the way he can make me furious and somehow still make me fight a smile, and the nights when we sit in the same room doing completely different things and neither of us needs anything more than knowing the other is there.

I want the ridiculous moments too, like when he yells to the entire neighborhood, “HEY WORLD, THIS IS MY WIFE AND I LOVE HER!” while I throw my hand over his mouth and try to shove him back inside the house. 😂

Those are the moments I cherish now.

Not some perfect love story.

Our story.

The messy beginning. The really hard years. The choices we regret. The grace we extended. The faith that grew. The people we became. And through all of it, the choice to keep loving each other.

If I could go back and talk to that 18-year-old girl holding her bubble gum machine ring, I think I would laugh with her first.

Then I would tell her, “You think you love him now. Just wait.”

Because one day she will look over and realize she grew up beside him. She will have watched him become a husband, a father, and a man of faith. He will have watched her become a wife, a mother, a child of god, and finally a woman who knows herself a little better too.

And somehow, after everything, they will still be best friends.

If I get to choose how this story ends, I still want the cheesy romance movie version. I want our children grown, our lives full, our hair gray, and our hands wrinkled from all the years we were blessed enough to hold them.

Then, when our work here is finally finished, I hope somehow we get to leave this life the same way we learned to make it through.

Together, hand in hand.

Happy 14th anniversary to my husband, my best friend, and the man I still choose. 

I wasn't lucky. Luck had nothing to do with it.

I was blessed.

And after everything we have walked through together, I know that now more than ever. ❤️

(9.15.2012)