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!
