A Year Ago Today (Part Two)

(Note: This is not really an appropriate title post since I'm not really talking about the wedding, which yesterday I apparently thought I would do.)

I have been planning for months to write an anniversary post when the time rolled around, but I never thought about what I would say, really. I suppose I thought the words were just going to roll off my tongue (or magically emit from my fingertips to the keyboard). Truth be told, I think I described my marriage experience the best way I could almost six months ago:

(Talking about the greatest challenge of 2009)
"Marriage. This may sound funny, but right after we got married and came back from the honeymoon I was kind of... well I don't know. I didn't expect marriage to be amazing 100% of the time, but I was almost (but not quite) disappointed because I didn't feel different once I was a wife. It was also harder adjusting to maintaining my own home than I expected. Living out on my own might have made this transition a little smoother, but I think what really made it bad was I almost felt lost. I had no school, no job, a new home, and a new husband. It was underwhelming and overwhelming at the same time. But over the months I started to feel better about everything and marriage started to feel more like marriage than it did... cohabiting I guess is how it almost felt at first. I never doubted that I made the right decision in marrying Garrett, it just proved to be a different transition than I anticipated. Easier in some ways and harder in others. Anticlimactic at first, but then it built up over the months to where now I'm starting to feel like I "get" it. There will always be some struggles of course, but it seems to be getting more wonderful as time goes on. It's certainly the best challenge I have been through and am going through."

When we first got married I experienced two things that I was not expecting:
1.) Being a wife is a lot less underwhelming than I thought it would be.
2.) Holy crap I don't know what to do now I'm a housewife!

Adjusting to being a wife = no big deal. Adjusting to being a HOUSEWIFE = hard. I still struggle with the latter a bit, though not nearly as bad as I did to begin with. I partly blame this adjustment on not living out on my own, partly not doing a lot of chores growing up, but largely on my disinterest in cleaning and cooking (at first, we're better friends now though I still prefer baking greatly). And as I mentioned in December, I was really adjusting to just a whole new life. No school, no work, new house, new husband... if we moved to a new place than I really would have been weirded out.

But the great thing about going through these things when you're married is that your partner is right there with you. The person you love and who cares for you helps you through it all, supports you through it all. When Garrett and I were engaged and I thought about what was ahead, it was comforting for me to think that with any fear I had about entering into marriage, it was something I would face with him and I would not have to go through it alone. And after those first couple of underwhelming months of thinking, "Well yeah, this is nice," I reached the point where I finally started to realize what can make marriage so awesome. It's a real partnership.

You always have someone on your side. There is always someone there for you when you cry or laugh, through your ups and downs. Someone who understands you completely. Someone you can vent to and share feelings with that you would not share with others. I have long considered Garrett my best friend, but throughout our dating years it's safe to say he actually shared that title with my mom, if we considered how much I shared with both of them. Now, he's definitely and undoubtedly my best friend. I can tell him anything. And while these things started happening before we got married, being married has magnified them all the more, and over time, it is these things that have brought our marriage so much joy in our first year. Lord willing, there are many years ahead of us with a lot left to learn, with both hardships and triumphs. But what's great is realizing that whatever we face in life, we face together.