09/03/2026
today, as we wake up on our 3rd wedding anniversary after being together for 12 years, our hearts are incredibly full
we hear it all the time —
“I could never work with my spouse”
“I don’t know how you do it”
we also hear —
“I love that there’s two of you”
“I felt like we were on a double date”
“you’re really living the dream aren’t you?”
maybe we are
not because every part of it has been easy, but because we have gotten to live all of it side by side
we have silently built
silently suffered
silently won & silently lost
cried & celebrated
made mistakes & learned
pivoted & prayed
there are sacrifices that will never make it into a photograph
prayers no one else will ever hear
conversations held late at night when we had absolutely no idea what the heck we were doing
risks that worked & risks that didn’t
but there have also been dreams that became plans
plans that somehow became our life
places we dreamed of seeing that we’ve now stood in together
not alone
not without help
not without faith
not without failure
but together
we often come back to the vows we exchanged on our wedding day — words we had heard hundreds of times before, but didn’t understand the weight of until we began living them ourselves
to have and to hold
for better or worse
for richer or poorer
in sickness and in health
to love and to cherish
perhaps that’s why we have such a deep affinity for capturing these very vows over and over and over again, and why each time, you might catch a tear falling from our faces
because now we know what those words are really asking
you don’t know, standing there, what “worse” will look like
you don’t know what “poorer” might ask of you
you don’t know what sickness will come
you don’t know which plans will change, which doors will close, which ones will open, what you will lose, what you will build, or who the two of you will become along the way
you just know that whatever comes next, you have promised to meet it together
and maybe that is the beautiful thing about marriage - you make the promise before you could possibly understand everything it will ask of you, and then you spend a lifetime learning what it meant
how lucky are we 🤍
