12 Years

August 4, 2001 was the day we got married. We were 21 years old. Madly in love. Excited for the future.

August 4, 2013 we celebrated 12 years of marriage. We are older. Hopefully wiser. Still madly in love, although we are now able to restrain from making out in the driveway before our date ends ;-) We are parenting 2 little. Still very excited for the future.

Our love is definitely different now than it was 12 years ago. Its deeper. Its seen hard times. Its seen days when we werent sure we wanted to stay in this thing (although we both knew we would because we made a covenant with God that we wouldnt run away... and God has blessed our steadfastness and commitment). And so there were days we decided to put in more effort to make this thing something we wanted to stay in.

And I'm so glad we did. And I'm so grateful that each year gets better and better.

Dont get me wrong. Relationships go through cycles and ours is no different. We have the same petty arguments over and over about every 2-3 months. But we are gaining perspective on what is big and what is really nothing to fret over.

And we are learning to show our love in ways that our spouse understands.

For anyone who is married, I'd highly recommend "The 5 Love Languages" book. It practically saved our marriage after the firs year! SO beneficial!

We are both a little chunkier. We have more wrinkles. We share more jokes and have enjoyed/survived raising our kids for the last 4 years together. We are learning more and more every day how to be a team. How to support one another.

We do our best to stay on the same page or at least keep each other in the loop as to our hopes and dreams and goals for life so that we can be a part of it.Together.

Cause "till death does us part" is a long time. And I'd like to get to the end and say that we grew. That we changed, together. That we loved.

I love you, Jeff Ford. You are my best friend and I'm incredibly grateful for the man God has led you to become. I trust you with everything in me and rest comfortably each night knowing that you would never betray that trust. You are a good man. A wonderful father.  And the one my soul loves.