Bugs ‘n Plugs and I celebrated our 17th anniversary yesterday. The story of how we met is pretty great… if I do say so myself. We both had an interest in a series of books and met on an online forum where we talked about them. We each liked what the other had to say and started talking through private messages, which led to AOL Instant Messenger conversations, which led to virtual dates where we rented a video, pushed play at the same time and talked over AIM, which led to meeting in person, which led to getting engaged three months after meeting in person, which led to our wedding a year later. And the rest is history.
Except it’s not. “The rest” is the most beautiful part of the story.
Jewelry commercials would have us believe that married life is about sitting in front of warm fires on snowy days in our Lands End flannel shirts sipping coffee in our perfectly clean home while our beautiful children lie serenely on our Pottery Barn rug coloring in the lines in their coloring books. It’s like the way diaper commercials want you to think that having a baby is a beautiful, soft-focus mix of adorable little toes and little baby laughs and cuddles and they forget to mention the screaming and the spit up and the sleepless nights and the poop. So. Much. Poop. It’s not real. But we’ve all been conditioned to expect these things. Maybe that’s part of the reason families have a hard time sticking together.
Life is messy. Life is unpredictable. Life is hard.
In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced major financial setbacks: multiple years when our expenses went up but our income didn’t (even some years when our income went down), buying a house about five minutes before the bubble burst on the housing market, making us “underwater” in our mortgage the first 11 years we owned it, said house requiring repairs always at the worst moments, and other things. In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced illness: I had preeclampsia during my pregnancy with The Progeny and had to be on bed rest for the last weeks of it, Bugs ‘n Plugs had surgery on his knee after our first dog knocked him down the stairs, Bugs ‘n Plugs had kidney cancer removed, he almost died with a pulmonary embolism, and I had a surgery go wrong leading to a much longer and more complicated recovery. In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced heartbreak: his grandpa died, my dad died, my grandma died, our first dog died. In our 17 years we have had stressful times at our jobs, we have had stressful times with The Progeny, and we have had stressful times with the dogs, the house, the cars… pretty much everything.
Life is messy. Life is nothing like the jewelry commercials. But when life gets messy, we know we have each other’s back. We pray for each other. We seek God’s wisdom together. We support each other. We make each other laugh. We forbear each other (we both have about a million weird quirks that we could let drive us completely crazy, but we don’t). We find happiness together sitting on the couch watching bad TV or making meals together or planning a secret outing to the Planetarium with The Progeny. Those wedding vows are no joke. They’re tough stuff. And it’s tough to face sometimes. But when we face it all together, we end up stronger than we were before.
Our marriage isn’t perfect because we’re not perfect, but we accept our imperfection, look to God to help us with what we can’t do, and we move on together. I love our story. I love how we met and how things worked out on our wedding day. But “the rest” is not history. “The rest” is where the story started. I’m glad that for the rest of our lives we’ll be blessed with each other’s company, humor, caring, reason, and love.
We are truly blessed.
And your strong marriage and positive attitudes make your extended family better and very proud of you.