15 Years!

Tim and I recently celebrated our 15 Year Anniversary! People are often surprised when we tell them we’ve been married that long. I think that is mostly because they think we look too young but some say it’s because many couples don’t stay married long anymore. Personally, I think that 15 years doesn’t seem very long. I guess it’s long enough to have learned a decent amount about marriage but I’ve been blessed to know many couples who’ve been together much longer. So, I know there’s still so much room to grow in our relationship.

We got married when I was a few days shy of 22 and he was 27. Somehow, I think we both pretty much knew the type of person we wanted to be with by this time. We had known each other a few years and even worked together before we were both “available” and started being attracted toward one another.

I remember the first conversation in which we were sort of checking  each other out to see if there was any potential attraction between us. In 2002 we were at a summer camp where we took a group of youth from the Inner City Church in Montgomery. He was working full-time there and I interned (under him). One night, it was time for the kids to go to sleep and Tim asked me if I wanted to hangout on the front porch of the mess hall since we had more than one adult per cabin. In that conversation we talked about what we wanted to do with our lives, our goals and dreams, how we viewed marriage. I remember being impressed with how much our desires aligned with each other.

There were two big connecting points that I recall. We both viewed marriage as a team. Growing up my family always worked in everything as a team so I honestly expected nothing less. There are so many benefits to approaching marriage and family as a team and that could be a blog post by itself. The other main thing was that we both wanted to spend our lives devoted to the mission of God…whatever that looked like. I feel that we both have remained open to what God’s mission and ministry for us looks like.  I love that because He continues to lead us into new territory. After that conversation…the rest, as they say, is history. We continued to spend more time together. Tim proposed on New Years Day in 2003 and we got married on May 17, 2003!

The most obviously unique thing about our marriage is that we don’t have kids. We equally have chosen and really have felt called not to have children. Instead, our ministry has generally taken that place. Over the years, our mission at the given time has been what our conversations revolve around and where our extra time, money, and love go towards. I have so much respect for parents and I love kids but the potential of having many spiritual children as we grow old really excites me. Like many couples we are mostly opposite. We’ve spent a lot of time learning to understand the nuances of our differences and discovering through trial and error how those differences can work in our favor. That could be another post on its own too! It definitely takes effort and intentionality to work through those things but we are absolutely stronger together thanks to our differences.

There’s so much I could write about in 15 years… dark and difficult seasons, fun and exciting adventures, things we’ve learned the hard way and things we’ve done very well… but I try to keep these posts short. I am grateful that I can say that through it all our love and respect for each other has kept growing. We adore each other more now than we ever have. We work together so, so much better than we did in our first ministry job as a couple in campus ministry. As each of our relationships with God have deepened so has our intimacy with each other. Though we haven’t always been on the same page in our vision, over years God worked in each of us to align us in His vision for our lives. I’m thankful for the good and bad of these 15 years we’ve had together. I couldn’t be more excited about the next 15 years as we walk together in God’s path for our life!

Here’s a photo from our honeymoon in Nashville! Ha! It was taken at the Parthenon in the park across the street from where we now live. 😊 Funny how God works sometimes!