Anyone and everyone remotely close to me knows that I am head over heals for the man I'm marrying. I can't ever shut up about it. When I find myself going on and on about how awesome he is, I think to myself, "man I should probably stop because this is annoying to most." BUT I CAN'T! Here's why: every new sweet, funny, adorable, (insert mushy word here) thing that he does is a milestone to me. I've never had someone love me like this. And if you know what if feels like to truly be loved by someone for everything that you are, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. So I must continue to shout it from the rooftops!
Don't hear me wrong. Judson and me aren't one of those couples who "never fight" (which I don't even think is normal). We fight hard and we love hard, and that's just the way it is. Unfortunately for us, we both have an extreme stubbornness that won't allow us to back down in fights so small as to what kind of milk we should buy (ORGANIC). But there's something about fighting with the person you were made for that gives you a sense of security. I'm yelling with theatrical arm motions or ugly crying, and I know that this man isn't doubting his love for me. WHEW! thank goodness for that. Fighting is to be expected when you start trying to create a life together with a person who isn't the exact same person you are. Who would even want it that way anyways? I love trying to figure out who we are, together.
We've come to different solutions of working out our frustrations about never wanting to surrender who's right and who's wrong. We put up one of those door basketball goals in our house to help us decide on who can win this fight. Usually we start laughing so much while doing it we forget about the stupid fight anyways. Sometimes we do things like this:
notice me yelling "that's not fair!!"
He is my very best friend. He will do whatever it takes to make me smile every single day. I don't know what I did to deserve such a loving man, but thank you God for giving him to me. He makes me laugh constantly and I know that no matter what life throws at us over the years, he will still make me laugh every day. Times like this are when I'm glad I'm obsessed with documenting my life with videos and pictures.
My own personal entertainment all the time! He does things like wake up 2 hours earlier than he has to just to walk me to school on the first day because he knows how much I love the first day of school or prays over me when I'm having a stress overload. He makes me soup when I'm sick and stays by my side all day. He does things like build me a porch! He opens the door for me every single time I get in his truck. He respects me and makes me his number one priority. He changed his whole life around for me and I never even asked him to. When he first started pursuing me I did everything I could to NOT like this long haired, no rules, crazy college boy. That was the LAST thing I needed in my life (I thought). I couldn't even help myself! I couldn't NOT like him! God must just giggle at us when we try to control the path He already set out for us.
Here we are now, days before our wedding day. I can't even believe that it's already here and in the same way I can't believe it has taken this long. We've had our fair share of doubt and discouragement, even from loved ones, that we are doing all this too soon. Some of the shocked comments and facial expressions we got after getting engaged after dating for 9 months were something I never imagined I would receive. Um hello you can create a human in your tummy in 9 months, shouldn't that be long enough to know you want to spend a lifetime with someone. BUT dare I say that I TOO used to be little miss judgmental towards people who got married "too soon"! Shame on me. Shame on anyone who thinks they can know the dynamics of the love between two people when they are an outsider. As if there is some fool proof formula that a relationship is supposed to have in order to do things the "right way". I remember when Judson first started talking to me about getting engaged. We were only together six months (GASP) when it happened and he even gave me a promise ring to tell me that no matter what he will ask me to be his wife someday and someday soon. This is something I always thought was really corny in theory, but when I lived it happening to me, it was beautiful (See, this is me realizing in retrospect that I shouldn't have been so judgmental in my past). I remember telling him "people are going to think we are crazy.." and he just said "who cares what people think!" I think I fell in love with him all over again that night. And I will be wearing my walmart, paint chipped, promise ring on my wedding day. He's the only boy who's ever kept his promises to me.
We are still in school. We are poor. We are young and we certainly don't have it all figured out yet. But there is no one else I would rather eat ramen noodles with at 2 in the morning while we are studying together. There's no one else I'd rather downsize my closet with so we can have a garage sale to pay our utilities. There's no one else I'd rather learn how to grow up with. We will struggle together, hurt together, and worry together. But we will also celebrate together when we do things right, laugh together when we look back at where we've been, and work hard for each other. I have a lot of dreams, but after this Saturday they will become our dreams, our lives, our house, our kids, our vacations, our jobs, our hopes, our futures. I can't wait to start this beautiful adventure.
