It's Been Some Dozen!

Photo taken by Shanda Leigh Photography

On December 27th Jonathan and I spent our twelfth wedding anniversary together. I know, I know... it is a delay in posting to truly celebrate, but we were away on a trip with each other. I've thought a lot about our last twelve years together. We've grown up together, of course, being high school sweethearts and all. Literally, we have seen each other through those awkward years of fourteen years old all the way till now -- our mid-thirties.

As newlyweds, we lived poor in our little Wymount apartment. We lived off my intern teacher's salary and ate Hamburger Helper without the hamburger. We added extra macaroni noodles to macaroni and cheese. Jonathan had Lyme's Disease and couldn't work or go to school. Once, Jonathan paid the car payment twice and that month was especially lean. But it didn't seem to matter because we loved each other and somehow things were always paid and everything worked out. We had so many common hopes and dreams. We thought we would build a dream house someday. It was a house that Jonathan had designed when we were in junior college. We were dead set to have that house. I think we still have those blue prints somewhere.

Our Wymount years were good years to us. We met some good people. Some people were less so. I'm sure they were kind to animals. Mostly. Our child was born to us while we lived there. And Ethan lived his first year and a half or so in Wymount, terrorizing my kitchen drawer that I stored my Tupperware lids.

We then moved to our home in Springville and we thought we moved into a palace. Moving from our tiny Wymount apartment to a whole house seemed like we had really grown up. We were able to unpack in approximately one hour. We had empty cupboards and an even emptier unfinished basement. We also had no family room furniture and no shower curtains. This reminded us of how we moved into Wymount and had no silverware. Ethan was crawling all over the place. This was our home.

Our marriage has grown. We are now at twelve years. Obviously it has not been perfect -- definitely not the picture of perfection we had idealized when we were teenagers. Just like any marriage we have had our ups and our downs. Thankfully, with the Lord on our side, we have had more ups then downs. We have had many good people in our lives to help us. We have also had many good people leave us -- Grandma B and Baba -- who have enriched our marriage and have given us inspiration in how to grow our marriage in their own ways.

We are definitely not the little kids we were when we first met. And definitely not the young newlyweds we were when knelt across the altar. But we are older and hopefully wiser. We are each other's best friends. We love each other. We love our son. We expect more ups and downs, hopefully more ups than downs. But we know that as we step side by side with each other that we can face anything. Together.

Photo taken by Shanda Leigh Photography