13 Years

Sometimes at weddings I wonder if the young couple has any idea what road will be laid out before them. I know the bride and groom both go into it having a plan for their lives, I just wonder if they realize that it doesn't usually go as planned. I wonder if someone sat them down five minutes before the ceremony and told them how the next fifty years would go, would they still go through with it? Or would there be a lot more people running out the side door of churches? Not very romantic, I know.

Sometimes I think it works the same way our sin works. God only shows little bits of our sin at a time, because if He showed us it all at once, we would be so overwhelmed by the despair and depravity of it all that we would just give up.

Anyway.

Yesterday was Mike and I's anniversary. The day did not go as planned. But as I look back over the last 13 years, not much has gone as planned. We started our day by Mike driving me to the doctor, where I had to have a shot in my. ahem. bottom. I was having an allergic reaction to some medicine. Still am. Hence the post in the middle of the night.

But today as I have been thinking about our wedding day, I keep coming back to the same thing. I loved Mike when I married him and I knew little things about him. His suit size, his favorite dessert, how he likes me to wear my hair. But now, 13 years later, I know a lot more. Like what kind of a dad he'll be. And how he'll react when I am so overcome with despair that getting out of bed feels like climbing Everest. How he'll do in a crisis. And I mean a real crisis. How he'll handle grieving the loss of a child. How he'll help me to do the same. And because of all that I can say that I love him more now than I did then. Because he's been more than I ever could have imagined. We have walked down a much different path than either of us had planned. I'm pretty certain it's been harder, but it's been better. Filled with lots of laughter.

And so I can say, without a doubt, that I would do it again. In a heartbeat.