Celebrating the Wins

Today may not be an anniversary or even a monthiversary, but I haven't written about marriage for a while, so I wanted to pause today to do just that.

We are coming up on seven years of marriage in just a few months, and that feels crazy to both of us. How have seven years flown so quickly? (I guarantee you seven years of singleness didn't move like this.)

Something else that seems crazy? Marriage is still so much fun. Such a gift. Back in my single days, married women used to tell me that once the honeymoon (whether literal or figurative) ended, marriage was just such a chore. So much work. Drudgery, even.

I declared it wouldn't be so for me, but inside I feared I might be wrong. I mean, after all, it hadn't been just one or two women who wared me of the fading joys of marriage. There were many who banded together to assure me the happiness would fade. Maybe they were right!

But as we approach this seventh anniversary marker, I am grateful for the wins we've enjoyed as a couple. I want to share them with you, not to boast in any way, and not to gloat over those who do face struggles in marriage. I share them in hopes that they will encourage you (whether or not you are married right now) that marriage really can be enjoyable. (Fun, even!)

1. We choose to spend time together. (A lot of it.)

We decided back in our dating days that we wanted to spend as much time together as we possibly could. Understandably, that got much easier once we were married, and it continues to this day. It's pretty rare for us to choose activities that keep us apart. (That has actually been one of the strangest parts of working with the women's ministry at our church...going to things that don't include Ryan.)

Do we receive strange looks? Sometimes. People don't always understand why I don't usually participate in girls' night out or why Ryan doesn't go hang out with the guys. We aren't opposed to the occasional time apart like that, but for the most part, we just want to do whatever we're going to do together. And almost seven years in, I feel like that's one of the reasons we continue to enjoy being together. It's what we know!

2. We make our own adventures. (Out of everything.)

You see the official adventures here. The county tours and weekend getaways and occasional vacations. Those are fun! But we've also come to realize that we make everything an adventure. I saw this spilling over in the pages of the scrapbook that just came in a few weeks ago. It was the book of our first three months of the year. Life wasn't easy in that quarter. Ryan's mom was in her final weeks of life, and we spent all our spare time visiting her and helping to care for her. Ryan's work hours were long in those same weeks, and our weather was a special Indiana winter treat. We don't care to go back and relive those weeks, but as I relived them on the pages of the scrapbook, I noticed that we had done everything we could to make the hard days adventuresome in our own rights.

We grabbed (and documented) quick coffee dates whenever we had a few extra minutes. We made the evenings at his mom's as exciting as we could - for ourselves and for her. Grocery shopping became an adventure, because it was a piece of normal life in the middle of chaos. I was so proud of us when I looked at those pages. We found adventure in the hardest season we've ever lived. While I don't wish piles of difficulty upon us, I do hope we never lose our desire to make an adventure out of the mundane.

3. We're growing toward the Lord. (And each other.)

Back in my single days, I learned the analogy that you've probably seen: the triangle of God/husband/wife. Picture a triangle, and write God at the top point, and then husband and wife on the two bottom points. If you take your two index fingers and draw upward from husband toward God and wife toward God, you'll see that as each one draws closer to the Lord, they simultaneously draw closer to each other.

It has been one of the greatest joys of my heart this year to see Ryan maturing in his faith. It's not that he wasn't before. But the months of his mom's illness, death, and his subsequent grief have matured him in much faster ways than I had seen before. And I'm not sure if the cause is the same for me, but I have noticed a bigger hunger in my own heart this year. And it is most definitely true that as each of us pursue that deeper relationship with God, we are growing closer to each other, too. We have great conversations about the things we're learning in our personal study, and we're able to encourage each other even more than we did in the past.

4. We show up to support. (Even when it takes us outside our comfort zones.)

Even though we do so much together, we still are two very different people with two very different personalities. Ryan is still the naturally outgoing one who loves his workouts and hands-on service. I'm still the reading and writing nerd who loves encouraging people and staying heavily encased in a personal safety zone.

But we do our very best to support the other in our passions and dreams. When Ryan wanted to do the evangelism outreach with our church at the county fair, the very idea made me sweat. But I signed up with him, went along, and bumbled my way through alongside him. When I declared I wanted to write the Bible study for our small group this fall, Ryan showed up to read the sessions as I wrote them and to enthusiastically tell people of my goal. I helped him paint the deck and he didn't grumble when I told him we were going to spend an afternoon at a classic car museum. (And we both had fun with both those things!)

All our together-time doesn't mean we deny each other the things we love the most. It just means we learn to love each other's worlds.

5. We dream. (All the time.)

Life calls for hope, doesn't it? When we don't have hope and dreams, we don't have much to propel us forward. And so we purpose to dream together...often.

We dream about careers we'd love to pursue together. We dream about living in an RV full time. We dream about places we'd love to visit. We dream about projects we want to do here at our house. We dream about ministries we'd like to be part of someday.

We dream while we take walks. We dream in the car. We dream when we can't fall asleep at night, which is like once a year for Ryan. We dream when we're excited and we dream when we're stressed and need to remember that life exists beyond that day's stress.

Dreaming matters. And dreaming together is twice as much fun.


And there you have some of the things I consider to be our best wins in these first almost seven years of marriage. We haven't done everything right or perfectly, but I think we've made a fine start to this beautiful life together!