Yesterday was our ten year anniversary. My mother-in-law graciously offered to watch the kids so that we could go out for dinner, which was both a wonderful meal and a wonderful date. (Knew there were a lot of reasons I married him: marrying into his family was actually one of the things I thought was pretty cool at the time, and have only been convinced more and more of over the years.) I know some folks make a HUGE deal about ten years, but I was pretty torn about how to handle it.
See, the thing is, we love each other each and every day. I love the life we’ve built. I got to see Jason really enjoying bouncing around the church on Thursday night, leading the kids in the VBS parents’ night. I get to wake up next to him, or see him rock our little guy, or dance around with our girls, or enjoy him geek out about which Linux flavor to install on our home systems. (MY answer: whichever one has a UI which lets me find the ‘Switch User’ button quickly, and whichever one doesn’t barf on Samba or connecting to our home printer.) We’ve been through thinking we couldn’t have kids, to having 3 kids (!), through two bouts with cancer, each with two associated surgeries. We’ve gone places, and done things, and still have lots of places to go and things to do.
So, the upshot is, I look at ten as, interesting. Not wow. Not amazing. Just, interesting – hey, we’re ten years older than when this all got started. But it’s not monumental, in the same way that getting to something you didn’t think could happen is monumental, or working through something hard and then getting there is monumental. This, this is just – hey, it’s been ten years already! Boy, hope we’ve got lots more than that left, because it’s sure been good so far.