Happy St. Patty's Day: Engageiversary

Yall. This post is 2 days late (& a dollar short), but I still wanted to post it. I've written pieces of it in sections over the last week or so... but finally today... I'm finished. It's nothing grand. In fact it is ever so ordinary, but I wanted to post it anyways. 

Five years ago & some change... I met B-sizzle, aka the Mister. His zeal for life, his ability to love people well, and his laughter caught my eye in a way that I had NEVER been captivated before. 4 years ago on St. Patrick's day, this man got down on one knee and placed a ring on my left hand signifying that we were making a covenant to do life together. (true story... he definitely attempted to put the ring on my right hand at first and as silly as it may sound... I love that part of our engagement tale). Yall I loved a lot about our engagement day. LOVE it.

Can you just indulge me a brief moment and let me tell you what Homeboy did 4 years ago? 

Yall... he designed a scavenger hunt with my closest friends stationed all over Raleigh with wonderful hand written notes/clues that eventually led me to him (because he knew that I love a fun surprise/adventure). He had friends hide in bushes to capture the actual proposal on film (because he knew how much I loved to document things) - Shout out to Mike Passaro for any cuts/bruises he endured. Ben knew my favorite flower and had them EVERY-STINKIN-WHERE. AND he had my parents fly to Raleigh and had gathered our closest friends/family to celebrate a surprise engagement party/tailgate that night at CARTER FINLEY (because he knew that if I had an engagement party... I'd want my family there... AND he knew that one day, I'd bleed red and become a true wolfpack fan like a true Salmon which would make me appreciate being at CF even more). 

This is right after he un-blindfolded me and turned me around to see all of our friends and my family at our surprise engagement party. 

Y'all, that man DID WORK creating something special that I would FOREVER treasure. He. Did. Work. 

And all that work was just a brief foreshadowing of what was to come. It was just the beginning. To the both of us, falling in love seemed like quite the feat (our parents thought is was nothing shy of a miracle). But the truth is, people fall in love ALL of the time, but they also fall out of love just as easily.  

Marriage is hard. It's difficult work. Life throws trials at you, and unfortunately you don't get to choose which ones you face. Children come, priorities change, health and wealth come and go, people die, cancer strikes, houses flood, hips widen, and everywhere we look we are reminded that we live in a broken world & surely we were made for something more.

These milestones in life - wedding anniversaries, engagement anniversaries, the anniversary of the death of a loved one, the birthday of your children/spouse, the anniversary of the day you found out you beat cancer - they all call for times of reflections. They call us to remember the good moments & the bad, but most importantly they call us to look for the hand of God in all of this and revel in the goodness that we have in the Gospel. After all, if I believe that God's hand changes the hearts of kings (Prov. 21), surely I believe that He softened my heart towards this man and this man towards me. The God who saw Ruth and Naomi and allowed the brokenness of this world to take their husbands, is the same God who provided a good and faithful provider in Boaz, and an even better provider in His son, Jesus. The Lord saw that it was good for Ben and I to wed. He saw the brokenness that we both brought to the table, and He saw the trials we'd face, the hurt we'd experience and inflict on one another, and He provided marriage for us. 

So 4 years later, and the THRILL of seeing him isn't the same, but it's better. That thrill has been replaced with a deeper adoration for a man who has held my hand at funerals, who gives our daughters baths at night, who listens to my dreams, who stands beside me during failures, and who never stops pointing me to Jesus. This journey isn't always easy, but I am thankful for God's good provision during both the good times & the bad. 

So this week (& especially this past Monday), we remembered. We looked at pictures, we relived the day, we talked about how he picked out my ring, the tailgate at Carter Finley, and we looked back at the young love that we had & are looking forward to our continued growth... together.

Happy Engageiversary Ben, thanks for doing life with me these past 4 years!