21 years ago.

21 years ago today I went on what was supposed to be me and my friend's brother chaperoning for her date with her new boy friend. She had asked me in church if I would please go with her to Les Miserables because she wanted to go on a date with a boy from youth group and the only way her mom would let her go was if her older brother went along to drive. The older brother didn't want to go be a third wheel and so my friend thought that she would play matchmaker and kill two birds with one stone. Apparently, her brother had one killer crush on me and had had it for quite some time but was too painfully shy to admit it. Me being the social butterfly that I was was too clueless to notice it and it was all news to me that this was all a setup.

After church we went to the LN station where there used to be a Ruby Tuesdays and I had the most disgusting Chimichanga on the face of this earth. I had no idea what one was but I thought it sounded funny so I ordered it. My "date" had placed a rose in my chair and I started to realize...Hold up! Am I on a date? We went to the musical and my date was bored into a lovely Sunday afternoon nap and all in all it was a lovely afternoon.

We were in youth group together and that date had opened the conversation. We now had stuff to talk about and fast forward 21 years here we are married with two kids, a mortgage, and a dog.

My now sister in law eventually broke up with her date, and is happily married with two kids and a dog of her own to a man she met at Olive Garden but that is a different story.

My sweet chaperone partner and I have been through a lot of stuff. Break up / Get back together. Laughter. Tears. Deaths. Births. We have practically grown up together. I will say this about marriage. It is hard. It isn't easy. There are going to be days that you don't like your partner very much but be honest with yourself. There are days where you don't like yourself very much and how do you handle that situation? You have made a vow to God to love this person, and please keep in mind that Love is a verb not a feeling, and what are you going to do about it?

My husband knows me. Good, bad, or indifferent he knows me and he loves me. Just like I know my husband my guess is better than anyone on the planet, and it is my joy to be his wife. He probably won't read this, but at least I put it out there!