On Our Way To Crazy

So. Five years of marriage. Wow.

If I had known life would be so good at five years, I would have gotten married sooner.

At dinner last night, over the best steak I’ve ever had in my entire life, we talked a bit about where we’ve been and where we think we’re headed. It’s been a good trip so far.

Our first year was characterized by an awful downtown apartment, full of bugs and water stains and raccoons in the walls and loud neighbors. We had to carry our laundry down three flights of stairs and down a long sidewalk, only to be greeted by a laundry room full of smokers and dirty magazines. We smelled like cigarettes for a year. We got our first ‘real’ jobs that year, going from a valet parker and a temp to a label sales guy and a nonprofit PR person. That label sales job was the start of something big, that nonprofit PR girl was in way over her head. We had one car, a 98 Chevy Blazer that only worked about half the time and had pieces falling off of it left and right.

Around the time year two rolled around, we bought our first house. A new construction townhouse in a neighborhood they swore was going to be amazing in just a couple of years. There would be a grocery store, a drugstore, a movie place, all within walking distance. We sold that house last week still waiting for those stores. In year two we really started feeling at home in Nashville – we had friends, we were getting involved at church, we knew our way around. I thought a lot less about moving back to Texas in year two.

Year three was the year of the party. I think we had a party for every single holiday that year. I had a house and a postage-stamp sized yard and I was using it! Several things happened that year in Aaron’s career – he moved into the new media department and met both the guy who would later become his boss and the band he would later manage. I left the nonprofit world in year three and joined the world of Reba with no idea what I was getting into. My title changed from Director to Assistant and I could not have been happier about it. Year three was a big one for us in youth work as well… we had a solid group of junior high kids that year, we went to camp for the first time since we got engaged, we started running bible studies and events.

Year four was a steady year for us, the first of our marriage where not much changed. We had the same jobs, lived in the same house, drove the same cars. We also left our church that year with the intention of helping start a new church in a different part of town. That… did not go well for us, for a lot of reasons. It was a really trying time – we didn’t really have the church family we needed and there were no youth. It was a tough call, but we left that plant and started going to GracePointe. I think it was one of the best decisions we’ve made.

Year five was a big one. Aaron left the job he’d had for almost five years to go to a smaller, mostly independent label. The first several months of that job were trying, but things are really moving along now. I left Reba and started at the church, marking my fourth job in five years and the end of my weekly ‘what am I doing with my life?’ crisis. We sold the townhouse and bought a real house in a neighborhood we have loved since we moved to town. We both feel really settled… like the stuff we’ve been working toward all this time is finally starting to come together.

We’ve done a lot of growing up in the past five years. I don’t know what my life would have been like if Aaron hadn’t come along… I would never have moved to Nashville and I’m pretty sure I would be a lot more boring. Looking back, we can both see how the other one has affected the way we think, expanded our outlook on life, brought out sides of our personalities we didn’t know were there before.

I’ve never been one to believe in soulmates or the idea that there’s only one person out there for everyone. But I can’t imagine a better partner for me than Aaron. I am beyond grateful to have met him, to have married him, and to have been allowed to share these past five years with him. We’re a good team. I can’t wait to see what happens next.