ANNNDD now I am even later because somebody's best friend showed up as a TOTAL surprise for her birthday and I had NOT finished the post I started hahaha. Oh well, that's the best kind of distraction :) (and I'll talk about it soon:). SO....here I am, starting again...again
August 12th my husband and I celebrated our 12th year of marriage. I can hardly believe that it's been that long, but since we got married in '00 and I have to write the date every day practically I can hardly deny the '12. It seems like life is always moving forward so rapidly I can hardly keep track but here we are, 12 years after our "I dos". This year we were blessed to get an entire weekend to ourselves. Finances being tighter this year (who's aren't?) we decided to save the money and stick close to home. We spent a day bumming around Anchorage, had lunch (free! Thanks to a forgotten Christmas gift card:) and doing a little shopping, a precious little, neither of us are shoppers:). The second day we went hiking in one of my very favorite places, Hatcher's Pass, on the Reed Lakes trail. It was SO great to be outside, even if the weather was a bit foggy, plus we got a lot of chat time...well at least when we weren't scaling the mountain or the GIANT boulder field. I told David the next time we take that trail I was going to hobble his stride to match mine (he's 6'3", I'm 5'5") so he was forced to travel at my speed haha. Still, it was a good day and even though we didn't make it all the way to the lower lake (poor signage & increasing fog) it was fun and a wonderful reminder that while we are partners, parents, etc... we are also still best friends.
I think it's important for married couples to spend time alone together doing FUN things, not just housework/chores. It's a great way to keep track of your marital health, if you reach a point where you don't really want to spend time like this, it's time to evaluate your relationship. Maintaining a long, happy and healthy marriage requires work, diligence, a willingness to check yourself, your motives, a willingness to listen to your spouses concerns, flexibility. Life is dynamic, ever changing, ever moving, it has ebbs and flows, struggles and joys, if we cannot adjust our relationships to suite this fact of life, they struggle and often fail. If we lose sight of why we got married to our spouse in the first place, or the things we love to love about them, we can easily become self-focused and, again, our relationships suffer. I am not saying that I have gotten this right, by any means. In all transparency, there was a time where I did very little of the things I have just advised. I became very self focused in my marriage, our struggles became all about his failings and nothing about my own. I lost sight of many of the wonderful things about my husband, choosing to focus on the things he wasn't doing in our relationship or in his own life, rather than choosing to focus on his many good qualities and lifting him in prayer for the things he struggled with. Note that I emphasized the fact that it was my choice to think about the negative and not the positive. When life is hard, when we face trials in life/relationships, we have a choice to make, to chose to focus on our blessings, in spite of our struggles, or to chose to focus on our struggles. We do get to decide, believe it or not. I am so thankful that after walking through my own struggles, God lovingly showed me areas of my own heart that needed some work. As I began to work through those issues, my focus shifted in my marriage. It wasn't about his failings, his negative qualities anymore, I was able to see my own part in our difficulties and when I started to take responsibility for them, things changed. My heart changed toward David, whom I have always loved but didn't always appreciate as I should, things are so much better and getting better every day.
I know that if we are going to last a lifetime together (which I fully intend to do) there will be times where we are less connected, times when we feel like one being...it's part of the ebs and flows of relationship. I do believe, that so long as we put God center, make our relationship always a priority, are open and transparent with each other, chose to focus on the good things and pray for one another we will make it. I can promise this, so long as I have breath I am certainly going to try to do it right. David is an incredible man, I believe God put us together, what I have with him I could never have with another. I am blessed and I will remember...
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| Heading up |
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| At the top of the first ridge |
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| There were an insane amount of BOULDERS to climb over & around. |
Where we thought we were supposed to stop hahaha
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| Heading back down |
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| Beautiful place... |
