Five Years.

Our fifth wedding anniversary portraits were taken by Anne Ryan!

When Christopher and I got married, we were kids.  I was 20.  He was 21.  We had just graduated with our Bachelor of Art degrees in English less than three weeks earlier.  We were a little bit naive about how the world worked, but that was probably because the world was changing.

 

It was 2007.  Everyone always had said that a college education was like a ticket into a good career.  Maybe not perfect right away, but you'd get there.  We had attended a number of job fairs.  We applied to countless jobs.  We also applied to graduate school "just in case".  At my wedding, a relative asked what we were going to do and where we were going to live.  At that point, we were waiting for all of the right doors to open.

Little did I realize that all doors would close but one.  The right one.  The door that would require more work and less pay than any of the other options.  However, this option would offer the most benefits in the long run.  After months of searching, we packed up everything in our apartment in Farmville and moved to Lynchburg.  There, we studied for our Master of Arts in English while working as graduate assistants.  We read a lot.  We wrote a lot.  We learned what it meant to teach.  We struggled and felt like we weren't getting anywhere.  We learned how to support one another.  We learned how to survive on little sleep while still thinking critically and writing articulately.  We were stressed, but we were also happy, fulfilled, and content without any money to spare on "fun" things.  Instead, we found beauty in sharing literature, writing, helping students, taking pictures, and climbing mountains.

Five years after we got married (and three years after graduating from grad school), here we are.  We have jobs in our field that we love.  We have a cute home that we take pride in.  We are about year from finishing our doctorates.  And the biggest blessing of all:  a beautiful baby boy.  It is all by the grace of God, but we have come a long way and accomplished a lot in these five years of marriage--even more so in the eight years we have been together if you want to look at that.  We spend a lot more time together than most couples since we have always worked together, taken the same classes, and now we work from home together.  But, get this:  we don't even get annoyed with each other like most people would.  We're a team and we help each other.

Our life together has not always been easy.  In the darkness, we hold hands.  Honestly, we are in the midst of a very difficult time right now, but we laugh and mourn together.  Even though we both are working through some heartache, Christopher puts me first and tries to take care of me before thinking of himself.  I truly believe that he is the most compassionate person I have ever met.  He is always eager to listen to anything that is on my heart.  I am so blessed to have such a caring and sensitive husband.

I wonder where we will be in five more years.  Who knows.  As long as we are working together, though, I know it will be the best place.