Happy Ten Years to Us!

 Last week, Zach and I celebrated a decade of marriage. On one hand it seems unbelievable that it's been so long, but on the other I feel that we've always been married, always shared this life together, always been by each other's sides. In many ways that's true, as we've traversed almost all of our adult lives together. We've checked off so many milestones: our first apartment, our first mortgage, our first car payment, our first 2,650-mile backpacking trip…

As our big ten-year date approached, I found myself stressed out thinking of something suitably dramatic to celebrate with. After all, it's ten years, and ten years is a big deal! But the three weekends leading up to our anniversary were packed full of my seasonal job with the Legends and Lanterns Festival, and I'm also in the middle of my teaching semester, and can only reshuffle papers so much. Trying to think of some big romantic thing was stressing me out, and Zach too.

So we decided to just… not plan anything. 

And it was awesome. We took walks among the falling leaves, and visited that local brewery we'd been wanting to check out, and watched a bunch of movies (DVDs from the library, of course), and visited the Missouri Botanical Gardens, and went rock-climbing at Robinson Bluff, and made nice burgers together, and just hung out and talked and relaxed. One day we even spent apart, Zach out rock-climbing with two of his brothers (who he rarely sees because their schedules don't line up) and me at home, happily writing fanfiction.

When we let go of the big cultural expectation of what a couple "should" do for their tenth anniversary, we did what we actually wanted to do, and it was way better than stressing ourselves out and spending a bunch of money on something we didn't even care about.

In many ways, it feels like a microcosm of our whole marriage. In our life together, we have treaded our own path, and our relationship is healthiest when we've asked ourselves what we truly want, not just what the script laid out for us is. It manifests itself in small and big ways, but this constant challenge of the norm feels like one of the greatest strengths of our relationship.

Anyway, Happy Ten Years to us, as we hope for many more decades ahead, side by side, facing life together with courage, love, and a healthy little dose of rebellion.

~~~