one year of love, adventures, and watching Jesus show up.

I should have written this post about two weeks ago, but life happens and so, here we are. I had meant for this to be a sappy sort of post; the kind where people would read it and immediately be jealous of how cute we are, but also semi-annoyed, because after being together for over four years, does social media really need yet another selfie of us?
Anyway, the 18th was our one year wedding anniversary, and it was just the best. We spent the day at church, and then adventuring around the Tahoe area, exploring beaches and trails that we had never been to before. We finished the night by having dinner with another couple that we love dearly, and since we're twenty-somethings, obviously we ended up reflecting on life and marriage and all of that good stuff that young marrieds love to go on about. Eventually the question "How would you describe your first year of marriage?" came up, and the best answer we could come up with was "eye-opening."
Basically, I think that you just spend your whole first year of marriage having your eyes truly opened to the person that you just married. And I think that a lot of people would assume that this only means the bad stuff, which is partially true. Nothing like a year of marriage to help you see all of someone else's negative qualities, but also (and perhaps more acutely) your own failures and shortcomings.
But a lot of what we remember from our first year of marriage is not all the bad stuff, but how often we have surprised each other with our positive qualities. Our eyes were truly opened to the awesome qualities that each of us possesses. While you obviously see glimpses of these while dating, marriage seems to magnify these good things. We both had many chances to choose selfishness over compassion, and ourselves over the other person, and many times, we made the wrong choice. But there were also times when we chose each other over ourselves, and those were some of the best times of this whole year. I got to see Adam in situations where his selflessness spoke Jesus to me louder than any words anyone has ever said. I got to see him grow and love and become better every single day, and if that isn't the best thing ever, I don't know what is. And since I'm not going to write a bunch of awesome stuff about myself and pretend he said it, I guess you'll just have to ask him about me.
All in all, our anniversary was a pretty awesome day, and a great cap to one crazy, but incredible year, especially because one of my favorite parts of marriage is just being able to do life together, which was what that whole day felt like. here's to many more, my love. xoxo