5 years of marriage today!

Five years ago (also on a Friday!), Jared and I tied the ole knot.

Today he is 2000 miles away in Haiti: painting houses, hugging orphans, pouring concrete, and growing in his walk with the Big Guy.

There is literally no where else I’d prefer him to be on our anniversary.

I will spare you a sappy novel about how I love my husband, but I’m reflecting today on the past five years and everything we’ve gone through as partners and it makes me a tad weepy. (I get it. I’m pregnant. And my hubs is in a third-world, cholera-infested country.)

The truth is marriage is a blast at times. And other times it’s a helluvah allotta work. Jared and I are the world’s WORST fighters. He gets stubborn. I get selfish and emotional. Neither of us are wrong (obviously). We tend to have a pattern of going through a four-month stretch of blissful fight-free-marriage, then stumble upon a rough week of knock-down drag-out fights. My point being, it’s not perfect. But there are perfect days. Months even. Days where he makes me laugh so hard, you’d think the literal devil himself was coming out of my mouth. Days where we end up having an elaborate dance party in the kitchen complete with choreography.

Marriage is work. But marriage can be beautiful. One of my favorite books on the subject is called, “Sacred Marriage: What if God created Marriage to Make us Holy More than to Make us Happy?” It totally blew my mind because I think we are conditioned to enter into marriage with the mindset that ‘all of our dreams have come true’ and now we can truly be happy. But what if it’s WAY bigger than that? What if entering into marriage forces us to live in a confined spaces with another adult who has differing opinions, so that we can learn to live beyond ourselves and our selfish desires. So that we can become better communicators, servants, better PEOPLE! I know if I lived alone my whole life, I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to. But with Jared around, life becomes a partnership. It’s not about me anymore. I can grow as a person and the happy times are a BONUS!

Anyway, speaking of happy times. I’ve decided to post two videos we took from our honeymoon FIVE YEARS AGO! We look like babies (if babies had weird haircuts and smoking hot bodies.) Things you need to know about this first one. We accidentally found all of our sibling’s names while on our honeymoon. Jared is not drunk, he really is this hilarious sober. Stay tuned til the very end and you will hear the original song Jared wrote for his sister Logan. “It’s goes Loooo-gan. Loooo-gan. Logan, Master on the High Seas…” (Again, I assure you, he is sober.) In fact, if you get bored, just fast forward to minute 6:30. It’s worth it, I promise.

Bonus footage: Jared gives a tour of our “luxurious” state room on our cruiseship. Once again, I assure you he is completely sober. I have never heard that voice come out him before and doubt I ever will again. My favorite quotes:

“This is a television. You push this button and pictures and sounds come out of it. It’s very entertaining.”

“You swipe it again…and it takes it…like a whore…”