Happy Monday! Can you believe this is the last week of August?! Though I feel like I seriously say this every month, I really feel like this month has gone by way too fast!
If you’re just getting here, every Monday this month we have had a featured guest to share their love story. If you need to catch up, you can visit here, here, here, and here. You wont be disappointed; I promise! We have had so much fun this month with all our guests, and I’m super sad to see the month end. Thank you to all of our visitors, your stories have been a delight to read :-)
To bring us home on our last week of love stories, Sherri from Life of a Wife is visiting. Sherri always makes me smile, and she always has my stomach grumbling with her delicious recipes. You must check our her blog asap.
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Caleb and I have known each other most of our lives, but it took us a while to realize we were meant to be together! We only dated for four months before we got engaged, and then got married less than six months later. Needless to say, we've learned a lot about each other this first year of marriage. I think the learning curve in all new marriages is quite steep, but ours was maybe a little steeper since we didn't date for very long before getting married.
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| Such an old picture of us! I was going into 9th grade and Caleb was going into his senior year of high school. Who knew we'd get married one day?! |
The other night Caleb and I had pudding for dessert; he wanted vanilla, I wanted chocolate. As I was serving the pudding, I couldn't help but think, he is the yang to my yin! Oh, how many times I've thought that this past year!
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| photo credit: colling photography |
We encounter our differences all of the time. Caleb is easy-going and laid back; I am super-organized and a little uptight. I don't like large groups of people; Caleb believes the more the merrier! An ideal vacation for me is laying on the beach with a stack of books; Caleb gets bored at the beach. Caleb is fearless; I take every precaution known to man. I get easily excited, show every single emotion on my face, exaggerate, and over-react; Caleb is stoic, controlled, and stable. I have such a problematic sweet tooth; dessert rarely even tempts Caleb. I am grumpy in the mornings; Caleb is up and ready to go first thing! I'll be honest: a lot of times all of our little differences drive me crazy! They have caused a lot of miscommunication, unmet expectations, and even some disappointment. But what relationship doesn't have those things?!
As we continue on this journey of life together, I am learning more and more about sacrifice and compromise. Rarely do we prefer or choose the same thing, so one or both of us is always going to have to compromise, and we're working on that. That means some nights we watch Audrey Hepburn movies, and some nights we watched documentaries. Even though I'm not a huge pasta fan, I try to make pasta a lot because Caleb loves it. For our vacation this year, we went to Yellowstone. I am not an outdoors girl by any means, so this was a huge stretch for me! But it ended up being such a perfect vacation because I LOVED seeing how much fun Caleb had doing what he loves! I even enjoyed the hiking we did and all of the time we spent outside, because what really mattered was that we got to be together in an amazing place!
Even with all of our little differences, I have never doubted that Caleb is the one God has chosen for me! We certainly didn't fall in love and decide we wanted to spend our lives together because of how similar we are; we just knew we would be better and happier together as one than as individuals. We know we are perfect for each other because we balance each other out and make a wonderful team! We push each other to try new things: Caleb took ballroom dancing classes with me before we got married. We haven't danced since our wedding reception, but I loved that he was willing to step way out of his comfort zone to make me feel special! I had never been skiing before, but Caleb loves it, so I decided to try it. I now know that I HATE skiing (I kept taking out little kids!), but it meant the world to Caleb that I tried. Caleb is great at seeing the big picture, and I'm attentive to the details, so we work well together. Caleb is super disciplined and has encouraged me to be healthier in my eating and my exercise. Caleb likes to say I bring "spunk" to his life (read: never a dull moment with Sherri!), but he is the calm to my storm. We love just being together, whether we're spending a quiet evening at home or traveling to a new place.
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| photo credit: colling photography |
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| in front of the Grand Tetons |
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| photo credit: colling photography |
I have learned to be thankful for our differences, because it teaches us to love each other selflessly and serve each other joyfully. What really matters is that Caleb is the man that best loves me, takes care of me, provides for me, balances me out, and most importantly encourages and challenges me to become more like Jesus. I am so blessed to go through life with him as my husband!
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Thank you so much for sharing Sherri! Arenty they such a gorgeous couple?! After I read her post, I told Sherri that her story was very similar to my love story with Phil. I just love this! You all most go and give her some bloggy love- aka comments :-)
Thank you all for participating in Marital Monday and sharing your stories!
