Seventeen

Yesterday my wonderful husband and I celebrated our anniversary, and although I don't normally like to toot my own horn, I have to say I'm kind of proud of us. Although 16 years didn't seem like that big of a deal last year, 17 seems pretty impressive. Maybe it's because 17 seems like it's on the upside of 20 instead of the downside of 15? Maybe it's because people often gasped when I told them what anniversary we were celebrating? I'm not sure exactly why, but when I say we've been married 17 years that sounds like a really long time. Not in a bad way at all--just in the sense that not many of our peers have been married more than ten.

Really though, I shouldn't be prideful about our lengthy marriage at all, because it's really not through our own merit and hard work that we've made it through 17 years. Honestly, being married to Chad couldn't possibly be considered work. God has just blessed me with a loving, affectionate, caring, helpful, loyal and incredibly supportive husband, and He's blessed us with a fairly low-maintenance relationship. We still have so much fun together and share so many interests; we just don't have to try very hard to get along. We love spending time together more than most couples we know--maybe because we are still such good friends.

I often hear people say that marriage is hard work, but by the grace of God, ours hasn't been. Although life in general is often messy and challenging, marriage for us has been relatively easy. We could not be more thankful for the incredible gift of a happy marriage that we've been given.