one month.

It's been one month of marriage - plus a few days - and I have so many thoughts.

Time will never cease to amaze me.  How something can seem like yesterday and also forever.  How you can feel as if it's always been and yet the journey has just begun.  I remember thinking this very same thought with the births of my children.  It's an instantaneous love.  From the moment they enter your world, you cannot imagine a world without them.  It's as though you've known them always.  

That's exactly how it's been with Calvin and why I struggle to find the words sometimes.  In our humanness we want to make sense of things, and yet perhaps we don't have to.  If we are walking in faith and trusting in the One who directs our steps, that's all we need.  Though from an outside perspective the timing may have seemed fast, from our perspective it was one hundred percent right.  Everything that lead to us meeting and how the relationship progressed was so clearly God that we couldn't even question it.  Even the meeting of our family was just so beautiful and so right.  It felt as if it had always been and the decision to marry sooner than planned came without doubt or fear.  

There's so many nights I sit back and smile to myself - sometimes I want to pinch myself to see if it's real.  There were moments I couldn't imagine this reality and yet here I sit.  When you're in the middle, the road feels impossible.  The hope gets you through and friends, there is such joy on the other side.  Is it perfect?  Not even close.  But it's full of God.  And grace.  And beauty.

We dove right in.  Cross country move.  Instant family.  New jobs.  Moving again.  During marriage counseling we spoke of the "honeymoon stage" and our friend mentioned he hoped we didn't have one.  It's easy to have unrealistic expectations of what a marriage should look like.  In an ideal world it's all rosy and happy and you're head over heels in love one hundred percent of the time.  I don't think that's what it's about at all.  Love is a choice.  It's choosing to love, despite one another's flaws and the difficulties that arise.  It's talking things through, communicating, and choosing to listen and forgive.  It's adapting.  It's constant.  It's work.  I think that could be said of any relationship - it takes time, and it takes work.  We are committed to putting God first and loving one another as Christ loves us.  And trying and trying again, even when we fail.  

Our first month has been real life.  We've laughed, we've cried, we've been busy to the point of exhaustion, we've made some difficult decisions, we've stayed up late and gotten up early, we've taken care of hundreds of details - we've lived in a non honeymoon stage.  And it's been amazing, because God is in it.  For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.  That's what it's about, and that's what we vow to continue to do.  It's been the shortest, longest, best, hardest, and most amazing month ever.  I cannot wait for thousands more.