Beautiful Surprise: November 2015

I didn’t get the chance to sit down on our anniversary to really write anything special about my 9 years with my husband. Our life is very busy with a 7 year old an 8 month old and businesses and what not. I swear the day gets away from me before I know it every day. But, I can say that even in the busyness that is our day to day I’m extremely thankful that I get to spend nearly every single day at home with my husband. He works from home and I get to help him and stay at home with our little girl which is such a blessing. It hasn’t always been that way and the road leading to now hasn’t always been easy. Ricardo and I entered our marriage after knowing each other for only 4 months but we both knew it was God’s calling for us to be married. I had prayed about him and God brought him to me. So, getting married quickly along with combining our two cultures together has definitely brought challenges. Thankfully though, we are both determined, intelligent people that have found ways to adapt and appreciate our differences. After having our son, Ricardo wanted to open a dojo which again brought challenges. We were down to one income for quite a while but again, God’s provision allowed me the opportunity to get a new job upon completing my graduate degree that made us substantially more income. But, combining the financial stress with a new schedule…meaning him gone in the evenings and me at home with a baby alone was a challenge I wasn’t overly thrilled about. Again, in the midst of the struggle the business did well and along the way we made some amazing friends that have become like family. Isn’t it funny how what goes on in the outside worlds starts to define your marriage sometimes? Despite the fact that our business was doing well and we had started great friendships, our marriage wasn’t thriving. We received some great unsolicited counsel from a trusted older friend of Ricardo’s (his Sensei actually) which lead us to start attending our church regularly and learning how to lean on God rather than focusing on the outside forces that had ultimately started causing us issues. Our church home has brought us not only a spiritual path neither one of us thought possible but a group of friends that we can never replace. It has only strengthened our marriage and honestly our friendship as husband and wife. But, as most people know marriage, even in the most optimal of settings, isn’t easy. We are two different people living one life together. That is hard! After 9 years of observing, learning, listening, yelling, fighting, loving, and trying to understand, I think we still have a lot of opportunities to grow in multiple areas. Learning how to be the wife I want to be along with the wife God wants me to be is a road paved with difficulty and celebration all in one. I know Ricardo feels the same about his husbandry and his role as the head of our home and my equal partner in life. But, as anniversaries do, they bring about a time of reflection on your marriage where you get the opportunity to remember and contemplate why you married this person and how you can do better going forward. I married Ricardo for multiple reasons…his caring personality, loving heart, hot body (just being honest), and his love of God. I still I want to be married to him today for those reasons along with our beautiful children we’ve created together and his natural loving fathering to them. I can only hope and pray our son will emulate that one day with his own children and that our daughter will seek out a husband that will treat her the same. He is the real deal and I have told people that many times over. There’s never anything fake about my husband in anything he does. He’s kind and respectful 99.9% of the time and other .1% that he’s not is when it’s absolutely necessary. I am very fortunate for a multitude of reasons to have married such a man. He makes me whole and while some women might balk at that thought, as a Christian wife, I am proud to admit that and grateful I can accept it. Our life together has been a match made in heaven and I will be forever thankful at the many blessings we have and I will be forever excited to see what God has in store for us over the many years to come. Proverbs 12:4 says a wife of noble character is her husband’s crown. I can honestly say my husband loves not only me but our family as his crown jewels just as God loves the church. Thank you my wonderful husband for 9 years of adventure and I pray for many more exciting journeys with you by my side. I love you!