It's been a long four years

9:04 PM

June 25th is a big day.  It’s halfway to Christmas. George Orwell’s birthday is today.  It’s the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death.


But most importantly, today is my wedding anniversary.

Look at those sweet baby faces.

I’m not one to get sappy, but holy crap, I’ve been married four years.  Sometimes it seems like we just got married, but most days it seems like we’ve been married for much longer.  

I don’t mean that in a bad way.  Sometimes I just forget Sean wasn’t around for some of the big moments in my life. I can’t believe he never met my Aunt Julie, whom I loved dearly and who died before we started dating.  It seems weird that he was graduating high school when I was in seventh grade.  Cradle robber.

But even though we’ve only been married a fairly short time, I will say, Sean and I have had our share of heartaches in these short four years.  A year after we were married, my dad died very unexpectedly, and I was utterly, completely heartbroken.  

He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt under his jacket.  Badass.

A few months after his death, I got pregnant with Atticus.  To be honest, that year is a hazy, confusing blur.  I was overjoyed to be having a child and devastated to know my dad missed out on being a grandfather.   There were many nights I couldn’t stop crying, sometimes happy tears, sometimes sad, oftentimes a mixture of both. 

Before Atticus turned one, my beautiful grandmother died.  Atticus adored her.  He always had a smile and a laugh just for her.  Of course she loved him too.  She loved all of us. 

Look at that shorty.

Shortly after Atticus turned a year old, Sean’s mom died.  Although she had been in hospice care for a few months, I don’t think anyone is ever really ready for someone to die.  There’s always a shock to know someone who was once there won’t be coming back.  

Just like with my dad’s death, we found out we were pregnant again a few months after Sean’s mom died.  We wanted to wait a few weeks before telling family.  We were a few days a way from breaking the news to Sean’s side of the family when his dad died very unexpectedly.

This is such a sweet picture.

It was kind of like something out of fiction.  It seemed unreal that we could lose so many  important people so quickly.  Suddenly my thirty-ish year old husband was the patriarch of a family.  

I know now, truly know, that sometimes the worst thing you can imagine actually happens to you.  That’s not comforting.  I know.  But it’s the truth.  The worst things you can imagine can happen to you.  

And through all of the beautiful and terrible things, the best piece of advice I’ve learned is this:  Cling to your God, and cling to your spouse. 

At this point, I thought getting through my wedding day was hard.  How naive.

I can’t say yet that marriage is hard.  For sure, it’s hard moments and periods of adjustment, but what is really hard is life.  But if you act out in faith that God hears you and loves you, and act in love and support toward your partner, you can get through these seemingly impossible hard times, whether they come thirty days after you’ve been married or thirty years. 

There will be so many more wonderful and horrible things that happen to us in the years to come. But right now, today, I’ve been married for four years to Sean.  I love him.  I love Atticus and Baby 2.0.  And I’d marry him again in a heartbeat.

Cue corny “awwww.”

You Might Also Like

0 comments