On Our Ninth

We’re celebrating nine years of marriage today! Our anniversary looks a tad different this year as it has for most during this time but we are still smitten! We grabbed coffee this morning with Lici. She pointed to our cups and said, “Coffees?”. Then we blew some bubbles, chased her around and walked until we found some dog pictures on the side of a pet store. Which our little animal lover found very exciting.

I’m still in awe that I had Brandon Poe’s baby. The Brandon Poe. The one I met when I was 16, when I turned around in my seat at church and instantly had a crush. The one who took me to homecoming, spoiled me, loved me, proposed to me and has created a life for us that I never could have imagined because it’s so much better than my imagination!

These nine years have shaped me into who I always hoped to become, a wife, a mother, a homemaker, a woman who trusts in herself and in her husband. Those first five years chewed me up and spit me out in the best sort of way. I’m blessed to have such an amazing partner in this life who was willing to stick by me through loads of baggage. Plus I was young and fiery. Brandon has walked alongside me through some very difficult and root bound seasons. He is and always will be my beloved.

I don’t have much marriage advice because nothing can teach you like experience can. Though I have always felt that people should look to young couples at least half as much as they looked to older couples. With nine years under my belt I realize there were things that I heard from well seasoned couples that I never fully grasped until time had gone by. Usually I was determined that we would be different and yes in some ways we were but for the most part I would only come to understand these things in time. Year after year I understood that marriage breaks you down to build you up. I could have been advised on everything in the book but there’s no way I would have fully understood until I experienced it. The time, the wear of selflessness, the constant exhausting communication.

Well seasoned couples are wonderful to have around when you are going through those hard times to nod in understanding and tell you it won’t last forever. But young people also have alot to offer. Sometimes we forget what it was like to hold each other’s hand on a walk. Or to live blissfully in what we have because our love is so rampant, so tangible when it is new. After all, Brandon and I came home from our wedding to a half inflated air mattress that was folded in half as our couch, yet we were immensely happy. There is something that young couples have a hold of that older couples lose their grip on and I think that sometimes maybe we all need that extra little spark to our marriage. Nine years isn’t too long, I think we’ve still got a little spark left!

I love you my dearest ♥ This past decade has flown! Thank you for the laughs. Thank you for doing the dishes the other night. Thank for getting Felicity every morning when you know I hear her in the monitor but I just want to rest a little longer. Thank you for this beautiful life and our beautiful home. I don’t honestly care one bit about the things we want to fix up here so long as you were here with me the walls could fall around us and I’d still be home with you ♥