1/3 of my Life

Life is funny when you break it down into numbers; like there are approximately 2,649,024,000 seconds in your life*. We assume that at the age of 25 we've lived a quarter of our lives, but that's also about the number of years we sleep over a lifetime.* A woman with 3 children will spend approximately 3% of her life pregnant and around 21% of her life raising them if subsequent children are born pretty close together. There are estimates that we spend 25% of our lives working, and there even more listed in this British news article. So what has me thinking in numbers?

* (assuming you live to be 84 years old at least)

I have just celebrated 10 years of marriage; my first decade with my husband, and seeing as how I'm only 32, that's almost 1/3 of my life so far! That's pretty significant for me since my longest relationship before my husband only lasted 2 years. That means the only people I've spent more constant contact with is my biological family.

It's strange that 10 years feels so short and so long at the same time. We are certainly not the same people we were when we met. No, we've grown together; we've changed together. It's funny to look back on these pictures because even though I think we were fairly worldly (or at least we thought we were), we were so naive. Even though we were mentally preparing for the challenges of marriage and parenthood... we weren't even close in our assumptions of how hard it would be.

Of course my sweet husband and I have a knack for testing the absolute hardest of situations. No one's life is easy, but I think about the decisions we've had to make, the losses we've faced... and I can't believe we went through them so young. We aren't out of the woods yet, but I keep reassuring myself that if we can just suffer the hard days in our youth... we'll be that much more prepared (and comfortable?) in our later years.

So what did we do to celebrate our 10th anniversary? My mother made us reservations at Epic. It's probably the fanciest place we've been to eat at in years, and possibly ever. We dined on a meal that came with an amuse bouche and preface before we entered chapter 1 and II of our courses. But the food, as amazing as it was, came second to spending that time with him.

I had a chuckle when we sat at the table with heart shaped napkins folded in front of us and he said: "I was trying to figure out a way to ask you what your happiest time was in the last 10 years..." and I confessed to him that I had wondered the same on the way over to the restaurant. Still reading each other's minds. Can you have a singular happiest moment?

So we recounted the misadventures of our wedding day: How a groomsman got his car towed with the wedding party tuxes in the back of the car (which I had to bail out for $118 because the impound yard operator wouldn't let me have the tuxes without releasing the car). How we went on to the wedding and the pastor had to stop the ceremony to tell our photographer (who barely spoke english) to leave the stage. We laughed as I reminded him how the topper for our cake never arrived so our florist jammed a few cala lilies in the top "to cover it."

That same cake top with the cala lily holes moved with us from our 3rd floor apartment to our new town home and stayed in a powerless freezer for 3 days on our 1 year anniversary. A rare hurricane which hit Maryland knocked out the power to our apartment before we went on our honeymoon/1st year anniversary trip, so we returned from Florida to a nasty freezer-burned celebratory piece of wedding cake. It was awful and, as my husband agreed to eat a "lucky" bite and we both gagged on the fondant, I knew we had it in us to keep going past the obstacles (as absurd as that may seem).

I told him that I knew when we hit 5 years, we were going to make it. The troubles didn't stop, but somehow I knew that if we could just make it to 5 years, we would be able to make it 10, and I'm pretty sure we can hit 15 and 20 now.

I feel like our competitive "can't fail" first child attitudes are what keeps us going for those goals. And, I suppose, I honestly believe that if you take on the hard stuff early on... that leaves the rest of your life to enjoy the spoils. Yeah, things are leveling off. We have God now (something we didn't have 10 years ago) and that makes a tremendous difference in the success we're able to achieve as individuals and as a couple. It's been such a difficult time proving ourselves in our current environment, but I think we're finally getting to the point where we're being taken seriously. I wish nothing more for my husband than for him to achieve the success he deserves (and prayer for your husband is one of those things that helps you succeed as a couple) and I know he's backing me up as well.

So here we are at 10 years... with kids, dreams, momentum... so far from the hardest days. I found myself smiling like a silly young girl again, absolutely in love with this man that has put up with me for 10 years.

I am grateful for the ways he's changed me, and for the new things he's taught me about the world.

 I have faith we'll see 50 years together (hubby's goal) if we can just live that long.

We might just be stubborn enough to pull it off.