Doing the Hard Work

This is us: me and my husband of 15 years. We like to say that marriage has been "blissful" with our tongue in our cheek. The truth is that we have worked really hard to have a good marriage. In 15 years we have wanted to walk away from each other, we have had hard conversations and told each other hard stuff. We have fought and ended up on our couch at night, I even drove away from our house at one point to have a break from our crazy life thinking, "What if I don't come back?" That's brutally honest and it's hard to be honest. I'd like to tell you that it has always been full of romantic dates and loving words and that we have always put each other first. I'd like to tell you that marriage is easy and that when you find the right person everything just works out magically and every day is like a fairytale. Um, no. Anyone who has been married and who is honest will tell you otherwise. In fact, the best advice or words of wisdom that I received at my bridal shower was from a family member who wrote, "Marriage is hard". That was it, plain and simple. So, knowing that it will be hard, in the last 15 years, we have rolled up our sleeves and put our marriage first and worked through hard stuff and kept at it. I can tell you that celebrating fifteen years together was really rewarding because we could see how much we have grown as people and as a couple, and we are enjoying the hard work that we are putting into our marriage.

Someone once asked us if we do marriage counseling and we responded, "Yeah we're in marriage counseling!". They were asking if we would actually counsel them as they were preparing for marriage and we laughed at the mix-up. At that time in our marriage, we were not in a healthy place to give any wisdom to anyone, except to recommend marriage counseling and that it is worth every penny! From those hard sessions with the counselors that we have had, and by putting those things into practice and continually working on ourselves and our marriage, we are seeing that it pays off! Now, I do want to hold this thought train right here and insert a huge, WITHOUT JESUS THIS WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE! This is the honest truth, He has used everything to draw us closer to Himself and closer to one another and without Him, we would not have the patience or humility to continue to love each other, so let that be known. 

So, here's a beautiful picture for you of our fifteenth year of marriage. We went on a mountain bike ride on a trail that we had been on before, maybe 5 years ago, and we remembered that last time we were on this trail we were fighting. As we glided down the exact same trail, I could pick out every tree and turn that I remember just being furious at Jake and wanting to leave him in the dust. Then I remembered that we stopped and ate last time at the bottom of a huge hill, not being willing to go up the steepest part and wanting a break from our arguing. I think we ate that meal in silence. Two days ago when we rode down this trail together again, we went up this steep incline, Jake riding up it slowly grinding it out, and me dismounting and walking my bike up it. But, from there the trail evened out and we kept going, knowing that this wouldn't stop us from continuing. And instead of fighting, we just had a great conversation and even when pretty deep emotionally and talked like best friends. The whole time that we were together felt so different from the last time that we rode on this trail because we had come to a different place in our relationship. Just like the trail, with its ups and downs and hills and winding turns, our relationship was in a different place. I don't think that we got here by mistake because I don't believe in a God of mistakes. I believe that we got here because we worked our butts off and we rolled up our sleeves and said, "There must be more to this. Let's not settle here at the bottom of this hill, let's pick up our bikes and continue on because I think it's going to be worth the work."