Today Makes Eight Years

We had a small wedding because I am my parents’ only daughter and my dad wanted to walk me down the aisle, to give me away on my wedding day. We had planned to elope, but our pastor advised us to go with the wedding, for our parents’ sake. We had cousins to do readings and play piano and sing. Family and friends took part wherever they could. I couldn’t have asked for anything more except that I know how much it would have meant to my man for his parents to be there. They just couldn’t make that happen but his brother and his best friend were able to attend.

Here are the last eight years in review:

We got married in December. I got pregnant almost right away. I graduated college the spring of 2001. Baby #1 (now 7) arrived in October. We took a trip to visit DH’s parents whom I hadn’t met. I got pregnant with our second baby who arrived by c-section in October of 2002. During these two years, DH changed jobs 3 times – the last being season landscaping. In 2003, he quit landscaping and started on with social services – taking on two different positions with them. I got pregnant with baby #3 and DH took on another job – delivering water. In November, DH started on with a chicken farm and baby #3 arrived and returned to heaven in March of 2004. DH continued on at the chicken farm until December of 2004 when we picked up our family and moved across the country to be nearer DH’s parents. I was pregnant with #4. While in Ontario, we lived in three different homes, DH had two different jobs and baby #4 was born in June. Work was scarce in Ontario and my best friend found us a job and a home back in Alberta, so in February of 2006 we returned to the prairies. Since returning, we have moved once, had two more children, gone through a bankruptcy, and DH is working at his second place of employment.

Now, eight years, six children and many moves and job changes later, we are still growing in love and in our understanding of one another. I think this process of marriage and knowing each other is an ongoing process and a process that I enjoy. I believe that only through God’s mercy, grace and love has our marriage become what it is today. There have been times we have wanted to call it quits; we saw no reason to go on. The fights were terrible – shouting and name calling, blame and guilt. But we didn’t; God saw us through every single fight, every single low point. And all the highs too.

We are strong, and our marriage is strong. Are we there? Have we arrived? I don’t think so. I don’t know that we ever will here on earth. But I think I can safely say that our marriage is a good example to others. I don’t say that to brag. We haven’t done everything right, far from it! But we learn and try and we change. We are real – what you see is what you get – people.

I look forward to many more years with J. I want to have more of his children. I want to follow him wherever he takes this family. I’d really like to settle down and have some stability that way, but I’d move again, if he and God deemed it necessary. I’ll go through the renovations on this church. I’ll work beside him in whatever adventure he finds. I want to grow to love him even more than I do now and yet my mind does not see how that is possible. Yet I know it is. When I hear of people being married thirty, forty, fifty years, I am in awe. In today’s society that is more and more rare. I want to be one of those couples.

Thanks to listening to my ramblings. Off to celebrate with my guy!