Three Cheers for Three Years!

It's hard to believe that Adam and I have been married for three years.  It seems like just yesterday we were having the greatest celebration of our lives.  At the same time, it feels like I've known my best friend forever.  We have definitely had to work at our marriage, confronting the challenges of melding two lives into one.  It hasn't been an easy road, but it's been a worthwhile one.

When people ask me how I knew he was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, two specific occasions come to mind.  One is when he first spent time with my parents early in our dating relationship, and he sat at the dinner table talking with my dad for hours.  My father is not an easy person to get to know, but he opened up to Adam and told him all sorts of stories about his childhood and emigrating from Vietnam and resettling here.  As I watched him and Adam talk, I knew I had found someone who valued not just family, but my family and my family's history.

The second occasion is when our first pug (and in many ways, our first "baby") had a debilitating seizure from his encephalitis and couldn't walk for a while. Adam and I slept downstairs with Frankie on the floor for weeks.  Franks was on prednisone, which made him have to drink a ton of water, and Adam would have to take him out to potty every two hours or so.  This entailed him holding Frankie up (who didn't have use of his hind legs) and spinning him in circles on the grass (a habitual ritual that Franks did in order to potty).  Adam's dedication to our pug and our ability to see Frankie through his illness showed me that Adam was someone I could depend on and journey with through life's up and downs.

And I was right.  We've held each other through a lot of heartache in the time we've been married.  From finding out Adam's mom had non-hodgkins lymphoma to the loss of our first baby, we've had to lean on each other when we felt like the world was collapsing around us.  But God has blessed us tremendously, and in those difficult times, our love remained as strong as ever.  Now that the cancer is gone and we have another baby on the way, we can't help but sit silently in God's goodness and be grateful for every single spark of joy that touches us.  We have so much to celebrate on our third anniversary.  I get to wake up every morning next to the best man I know.