Our Marriage in 2013

There's so much that happened last year. So many of those happenings left us just trying to survive. Now that we're on (I think) solid land,  I keep staring at the proverbial ocean wondering where we are in contrast to where we've been.

Every time I examine last year, it always lands on our marriage. Always. This past month has seen the same conversation more than a handful of times. Ben playing chess, me asking him how we've changed. We've teased out different realities about our marriage that 2013 held and I want to remember those.

So here they are:

2013 Was the Year We Became Soul-Friends.

We were friends before. But not like this. Friend past the "wanting to look good for your friends" friend. Yet, wanting to be the very best friend. A beautiful vulnerable friendship has developed.

When we had Eowyn, I was able to keep some strength together. Heck, I even was cracking nerdy big-bang jokes in labor.  We were sleep deprived with our newborn, but it was all normal and good and while we had our days of crazies, it was more about physically just staying alive.

This year with miscarriages, with waiting for life plans, with surgeries and travel, it was about keeping our souls alive. And you need a good friend (and a good Jesus) to do that. We became the kind of friends who figure each other out and put at the top of our to-do lists the things that keep one another breathing. I dont know how to explain it really. I think I just like him a lot more and I can tell we just get each other deeper. We're "for each other" in ways we hadn't been before. He's my beloved and I am his.

2013 Was the Year We Learned about Each Other in Grief.

This year held colossal changes for our marriage. When you go through a death with someone, of any kind I imagine, something changes in that relationship. We were faced with one of my top 3 worst fears and I wept and said the nastiest of my heart's words. He was there as witness. We fought in grief, we cried in grief, we struggled in grief, and we celebrated in grief. But it was 'we.' No one else was there for the intimate moments where I asked him about his belief in Christ and struggled honestly through my unbelief. We grieve different and sort through who God is different, yet we sorted through it all in tandem. Encouraging each other on, breathing life into each other. I now know how 'we grieve' and I'm blessed by that knowledge. We made it! We can face hard things and still end up on the other side, loving each other well! Praise the Lord.

 2013 Was the Year We Started Saying 'Yes' in the Big, Incredible,

 "For Real?!" Kind of Ways.

To each others dreams, to hopes yet realized, this was the year we figured out how to say yes. The other years of marriage have been normative, this past year was extraordinary. We looked at each other and asked countless times what our wildest most crazy hopes were. Then we found ways to start to go after them together. My favorite quote was when Ben was talking about his love for good quality fiction (LOTR, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, Daughter of the Forest, etc.) and the dream to someday write one himself. In that conversation he said a phrase that has sort of embedded into my soul. If he were to write a book, he would hope it would be inline with the greats, where "good overcomes evil, but not without great sacrifice." He carried on talking about more details, but I sort of was stunned with the weight of that sentence.

Sometimes I stand amazed at the casual beauty that escapes my husband's mouth. Isn't that everything that a good story ever was. Ever?

In so many ways that phrase has reconciled our own story in my soul. This story isn't over. "Good overcomes evil, but not without great sacrifice."

If there ever was a man who I would hope to live out this story alongside, it's this guy. And his dreams? my dreams? It's funny how as the years pass, we find our makeup to just sort of lend itself to lending ourselves to each other. I get excited to pursue his dreams. He encourages me and equips the dreamer in me to do mine. We make a good team.

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May 2014, whatever it may hold, lead us closer to Jesus and in that process to each other.

May we defeat all the LOTR LCG Encounters and reign victorious forevermore (board gamers for life.)

May we see a few breathtaking sights, raise a champion of a kid and eat some good food in the process.

And may we continue to laugh the deep belly laughs that seem to come into our house daily as we figure out each others humor, and marvel at how we created such a hilarious little spraguelet. This aspect may be my very favorite part of marriage. Ben, you're legitimately the funniest human I've ever met. I appreciate your wit like gold.

I have a sneaking suspicion that all this and more will get to be our reality this year.