Anniversary One

Wives are meant for laughing with.

That’s what I just decided. Rather, of that I just became convinced.

Last night, my wife, Katie, and I celebrated the one-year anniversary of our marriage. We drank a little too much wine*, so my memory of the night is less than perfectly clear, but that’s OK. I remember enough. I remember that the entire night went off just as I’d planned it, and that we laughed seemingly nonstop.

*(We finally found some we liked, so we feel like true grown-ups now. Sure, you can be supporting yourselves and living on your own and all that jazz, but it’s clearly finding a wine one really likes that makes a grownup.)

(Also, don’t worry--we didn’t drive. You know why? Because I, being the amazing husband I am, ordered us a limo. In fact, the very same limo and driver that transported us from wedding to reception one year ago.)

I’m a pretty goofy guy when I let myself be. But the older I’ve gotten, the more closed off I feel I’ve become. It’s not intentional. In general, I like people and all. I have a good time with people. I'm just....quieter, somehow. More reserved, for some reason. Maybe it’s maturity. Or maybe I’m just weird. We writers usually are.

I married Katie because I’ve always been able to be my full self with her. I credit this to the fact that we’ve known each other since we were 10 years old.*

*(So that’s my marriage advice: know someone for 12 years before you marry him or her. Guaranteed success. Unless you’re my Uncle Bob. I think he and his wife got married like, two days after their first date. OK, not that fast. But pretty fast.)

That probably has something to do with it, too. I get all my craziness out when I’m with her, so I’m more laid back with other people, maybe. Or not. I have no clue, to be honest. I just like writing about her, so here I am.

She got me an awesome anniversary gift, by the way. It’s a canvas of us standing in sea reeds after our wedding, with the Bible verse we picked for our wedding:

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it, and nothing can be taken from it. God does it, so men will revere Him. [Ecclesiastes 3.14]

And on the back, she wrote 125 reasons why she loves me. She’s phenomenal.

You know, I have days wherein I doubt lots of things about Christianity, what with us Christians falling in love with the most controversial deity ever. Seriously, if I were to try to create a god, and set out to make it as confusing as possible, I probably couldn't outdo God. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But yeah, God, He's downright maddening sometimes. It definitely makes me feel pretty insane sometimes, loving Him, just to be completely honest.

But I believe He's real. I really do. Don’t ask me why. I probably can’t give a great answer. Mostly, I see reasons to believe in others, and more specifically, their stories. It’s a large part of my inspiration and drive for writing and self-publishing The Edge of Legend. And Katie and I ending up together, and staying together, is one of the greatest stories I’ve ever heard. I know everyone thinks that about their own relationships, but I’m not just saying that because it’s us.

I’m not going into all the details now. The story I tell most people is something lighthearted about how it took me 10 years to figure out how much I liked her. And that’s part of it. But a relatively small part. The tip of the iceberg, as people say. The rest gets pretty heavy. Maybe one day, I’ll tell that story in full, and then you will be as amazed at it as I am. But today’s not the right day.

But I say all that to say this: there’s no way our story “just happens.” I’m not a big believer in destiny or fate or anything like that. We are who we are, and we do what we do, and some of us become seemingly more compelling than others, but at our core, we’re all pretty awesome people. We’re all made to be great; it’s just a matter of what we measure our greatness by.

My point is: Katie is one of the most inspiring people I know, and God has a lot to do with that. I really should write more about her, because she moves me. I said something up there about being the most amazing husband ever. That was a joke. And not even a very good one.

Really, Katie’s the most amazing wife ever, because she loves me despite seeing me at the farthest end of the spectrum away from amazing.

Oh, sure, this past year, we’ve gotten angry at each other and yelled at each other, and there have definitely been times when we didn’t like each other so much. Ain’t nobody perfect. But teams can have perfect seasons, and when Katie and I are clicking, I can imagine no better life.  

It’s interesting….we never really had that “honeymoon phase” I always hear about. We really didn’t. I don’t know why. Guess that happens when you just know someone as well and as long as we have. It’s always just felt “right,” which I know is the most massive cliché ever, but it’s the truth. Maybe a better way of saying it is, it’s just felt normal. Or expected.

Yeah, that’s the word. Us getting together and getting married just always felt expected, in a way. Not that we ever imagined it before it actually happened. No way. It was so the opposite. Katie was my sounding board for all my relationships. She knew more about my ex-girlfriends than any wife should know about her husband’s ex-girlfriends. I used her Internet to talk with Jennifer, the girl I “dated” who lived in Idaho. (In quotes because c’mon, how can two teenagers really date each other when they live 2,500 miles apart?) And I talked with Katie the night before I planned to break up with Christy, the girl I dated for a couple months one summer. And I’m sure I talked to her about other girls, too.

Katie heard all my musings about these girls, and all the things I was learning from being with them, and then breaking up with them. Little did we know all those lessons would one day lead me to her, and make me someone she'd love "like that." 

But before that happened, we never expected to end up together. And then we did....and it didn’t feel like a surprise at all. It felt like, as Chandler puts his relationship with Monica in Friends (which Katie and I watched a bajillion hours of once we started dating), “We just felt like we should have been doing this all along.”

So here’s to us. Here’s to one year. And here’s to at least two more, until the world blows up or whatever in 2012.

Speaking of laughing, here’s the 10-minute clip of our wedding video. We actually watched the full 30-minute version last night, but I can’t upload that to YouTube. We watched it while sitting on the beach, right where we got married, as the last bits of sunlight faded into the night.

Comments

[kara]

well golly geez.
this was just so sweet to read.
ha.
i am so happy for you and her and y'alls relationship.
<3
i love youuu.

[Brandon]

Haha, thanks.