To my twenty year old self on her wedding day –

You are so young, bursting with hope and ambition. I envy your passion. Your dreamer’s spirit. Take a deep breath. Here we go.

Your first year of marriage will be everything you dreamed it would be. You will be completely broke and perhaps the happiest you’ve ever been. You’ll find yourself curled up on the caramel couch with Matt watching Lost reruns on dvd on a random Tuesday night in an otherwise empty living room apartment, and you will feel so right, so content that you think you couldn’t possibly be any happier. But you will be. 

Your second year will test you in ways you never thought you’d be able to survive. But you will. And you will come to discover that the greatest lessons in life come hard fought. That growth is both beautiful and ugly and it only works when you bend to the waves and trust the One who guides the storm. You will learn to fear complacency more than you fear discomfort. And you’ll learn that your husband is both everything you hoped he’d be, and also a sinner. You will learn the meaning of “love keeps no record of wrongs” and realize why the famed passage of scripture doesn’t say “love is never wronged”. 

You will come to the conclusion that marriage is a whole lot of learning, and maybe learning isn’t your favorite. 

But then you will find magic co-writing a story that could be written a million different ways. You will go against the grain of the American Dream and instead chase purpose and delight with the one other human you feel truly understood by.  

You will reach 30 and realize that it wasn’t really fair to give such lofty life goals such an early and arbitrary expiration date. And you’ll determine to keep dreaming into your 30, 40s, 50s, and as long as God allows. You’ll ponder all the books unwritten you’ve kept tucked inside, all the countries untraveled, all the paths untaken, and the one you did take, that led you to where you are now. 

You will have babies and hate pregnancy and be secretly terrified of all the ways parenthood changes a marriage. You will mourn life as just the two of you and then in one single moment, as that slippery, alien-like baby makes his grand entrance, you will relinquish every fear in exchange for one of life’s greatest gifts.  You will lose yourself a thousand times, exactly as you feared you would, but somehow you will always find your footing. And you’ll gain so much more than anything you were ever asked to lay down. 

You’ll realize that you married the best man in the world for all his middle-of-the-night baby soothing, odd jobs worked, and the way he still sets a glass of water on your nightstand every night before bed. You’ll cry at how much you love your family. At how ridiculously tired you are but yet somehow still so fulfilled. 

You’ll keep dreaming, amidst the breastfeeding sessions and preschool lessons. And you’ll keep fighting for romance between the hours of 8 and 10 pm every evening. You’ll find yourself ten years in, still making each other laugh. Still best friends. Still in love. Still so thankful. 

He’ll continue to romance you through sweet morning texts and grocery store tulips. You’ll flirt in public and dance in the living room after the boys have gone to bed. But your love will no longer be that whimsical, mysterious thing. Rather, it’s sturdy and grounded, bound by hearty prayers and words of Truth spoken gently. 

You’ll fight for his dreams and he’ll fight for your creative pursuits. And on more selfish days, you’ll fight for your own. You’ll apologize. A lot. And realize that ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘I love you’ are staples, like bread and milk. 

Today you say “I do”, and every day after, you’ll realize, is the “do” part.  And ten years from now, you’ll sit and ponder it all, wondering how one wretched sinner could experience such undeserved love. And you’ll know deep down, that the gospel is playing out in your very living room and in the bed next to you each night. And it’s so much better than any happily ever after.