Five

Dear Husband,

Anniversaries are boring. One whole day out of the year people celebrate their marriage like this one day matters more than the other three hundred whatever. That every single morning, sans one day, married people wake up and go about their business as if there's only one single day in the whole year that makes a marriage count. We fall into that trap as well. We get a babysitter and we make a reservation at a fancy restaurant. I dress up and spend more than 10-minutes curling my hair. I even wear lipstick and dig into the depths of my makeup drawer for the cracked and broken eyeshadows that I only wear once a year. I buy a new dress and maybe even new shoes and I'll surprise you with them seconds before we head out the door. And that's it. Sure, on our first anniversary we went to the mountains and stayed at a resort and had the best meal of our life and had too much wine because everyone we knew sent us on our way with a bottle of wine, plus the three that I had bought because I clearly thought that not one or two would be enough.

But that's it.

We put so much expectancy on the date that we got married that we forget about the in-betweens. The other three hundred whatever days of the year that aren't the special days. The days where I don't get out of my pajamas until it's 10 pm and I'm only getting out of them to put a clean pair on. The days where we fight and I don't speak a single word to you. The days where I have no motivation to do anything and so Maddox and I sit around until you come home and rescue us from the funk we've put ourselves in. Those are the days that I'm talking about. The ones that aren't boring because they're real life. Those are the days where the fights happen and the baby screams himself to sleep for approximately thirty minutes and the dinner didn't turn out like I had planned and I've ran the same load of laundry through the washer at least eight times because I don't want to put the crap from the dryer away.

But you, my sweet husband, you've taken those three hundred whatever days and scooped them up like candy and presented them to me to prove that anniversaries are boring. It is a boring life to live for one whole day out of the whole year. It is a boring life to buy a new dress that I'll never wear again and to eat at a stuffy restaurant where we don't belong, just because we made it another year. Success in our next year of marriage does not hinge on how we spend July 10th, this I promise you.

And this is what you've promised me because you have given me the opposite of a boring life. You have made this marriage count not just on the day we were wed, but on the other days too. I do put weight on this day because it is the day that I married my best friend. I wore a pretty dress and had my hair done and didn't see you until I came around the corner on my dad's arm and there you were at the top of those stairs and I was like, "Yes. This is it." And so I love today. I love that today marks the beginning of our life together and we can look at this day and remember why it is that we said, "I do," six, twenty, thirty-nine-years down the road. But I am so glad that you have chosen to make our marriage work the rest of the days, too. I'm glad that the rest of the days matter more than that one day. That you surprise me with days off of work and a coffee every Friday morning after your meeting with your students (it's still a surprise, okay? don't stop.) and desire for our marriage to be as much of an example of what God intended marriage to be as I do.

Let's continue to have boring anniversaries. Even if we find ourselves hiking across Europe or sticking our toes in the Caribbean. Even if we live in Africa one day or across the country from our parents and refuse to pay for a babysitter, let's keep them boring. Let's make the days in between all of the years matter more.

Happy five-years. I love you.
L