Thankful

When I look at this engagement photo, I have so so many thoughts such as, "Wow, we look so young!"  Or, "Hey, Mike had a little bit more hair back then!"  But usually, my thought/feeling is, "I am SO lucky he chose me.  I look peacefully happy."

This past week, Mike and I have had an opportunity to go through an experience as parents with one of our children that was a little new to us.  We have talked at length about the best way to handle it.  Tonight we were able to do a little more analyzing and come up with our map of what we were going to do from this day forward.  Through this parenting experience we have grown closer, more united, more one.  And I just feel incredibly grateful to be linked with this man and I feel the need to write about it.  It's good to document these emotions and read about them and remember the feelings and experiences.

So that is what I am doing.  Documenting, so that when I want to strangle him over something stupid, I can pull up our blog and read this post!  No, not really, well I am sorta serious!  

At the end of our marathon discussion tonight, I said to Mike, "You really had no idea what you were marrying when you asked me.  You know that?"  And he smiled and said, "As if that talk we had on the beach didn't clue me in?"  I giggled, remembering how he had brought me to California for the first time to meet his family and had taken me to the beach for a bonfire.  We sat snuggled up close looking at the flickering flames and listening to the waves crash and I blurted out, "I am never going to work outside the home when I have children.  Let's just get that one thing clear right now.  So, if you're looking for a gal that wants to work outside the home, it's not gonna be me."  We hadn't mentioned the "M" word to each other  yet.  I had just met his parents for the first time that day.  If there was a time for him to be scared and decide, "This lady is LOONY, I think I had better get out now," it was then.  Heavens, we were just having a nice romantic date on the beach and out of nowhere I blurted out this craziness to him.  He had no idea where it came from.  After fourteen years of marriage, he isn't that surprised anymore by these outbursts of mine.

And so tonight, when he was teasing me about the beach outburst, I cried out, "What possessed you to marry me?  Why didn't you run when I said those kinds of things to you?"  He just smiled and said, "Because I loved you and now I love you even more."

When we have moments like tonight, I usually think, "Can this be real?  Am I really as fortunate as this that I married someone so darn good?  That loves everything about me?  Can it be that I actually have a marriage I only read about and dreamed about?"  Now, I fear when I say all of this that I paint an incorrect picture of our day to day.  Take two nights ago: our phone conversation ended extremely curt and cold.  We have our not so good moments and quite a few of them.  We get mad at each other, but are so very committed to one another and grow united more every day, every year.  I think that's what makes our marriage so unbelievable.  I didn't know a marriage could be like this.  I didn't know that I could be linked with someone that is insanely different and mold together with me over time.

Moments like tonight drive me to write because I am a person that when something sweet or wonderul happens I have to tell someone to complete the experience.  Do you ever feel that way?  That might explain my crazy outbursts like at the beach.  Obviously, I am a verbal person.  I married someone who was not, but has become much more adept at conversing than he was fifteen years ago--out of survival.