For our anniversary, Taido and I had a chance to get away at the end of December to Hot Springs, courtesy of some really wonderful folks. (Thanks Jim and June for giving us a wonderful place to stay! And thank you to the many many folks who kept kids for us!)
We looked out over the lake, read books, ate wonderful food, watched movies and just enjoyed being together.
I love that our anniversary falls at the end of the year because if we take a little time to celebrate, we get to spend some of those precious hours alone talking about what we’re thankful for from the year before as well as what we’re hoping and dreaming for in the year ahead.
One of the many things I wrote down as we brainstormed hopes, dreams and goals is that we want to try to go out together once a month.
Lots of couples we know have a weekly date night, but somehow we have barely managed quarterly ones over the last 17 years. So, once a month seemed like a good balance for us.
So for an anniversary gift, I gave Taido 12 envelopes filled with promises for dates in the coming year. (I totally stole this idea from Whitney, who gave this to my brother for Christmas.) I thought it was a precious handmade gift idea, and now we have a physical reminder to push us to actually get out of the house sans children.
I’m so thankful for 17 years with Taido and I look forward not just to our once a month dates but to all the crazy in-between. For better or worse.
The running kids around, the meeting at soccer and football games, the piles of laundry, the epic road trips, the buckets of camping gear in the garage, the coffee in the morning, the quesadillas in the evening, the helping with homework, the runs to the store for posterboards or glue sticks, the discussing of books, the fighting in the dark, the making up by the light of day, the hoping like crazy for our kids to do great, the wishing to Jesus that they would just survive, the weeks in the mountains, the months in the valleys and every little moment of time that is us.
For all this and so much more, I am more than thankful.
And for whatever comes, here’s to us.
*photo by Whitney Loibner
As you gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
Happy belated anniversary!