Marriage

This week I’ve been blessed in celebrating my 2 year wedding anniversary with my main squeeze. I took a waddle down memory lane and reminisced the path that my husband and I have been on for the past 3 years. From the moment that Doug and I met I knew that I’d be in for a wild ride since on our first meeting he walked in my heels, made silly jokes, and farted while saying bye to me! Surprisingly, before asking me to be his girlfriend Doug sat me down and talked to me as if we were business partners on the verge of a very important transaction. He told me that he kinda liked me, but he didn’t want to waste his time. He was ready for something serious and that he didn’t want to mess around. Dang , dang, dang ohhh DANG! The business proposal consisted of three very important “non-negotiables” that I had to agree with in order to be his girlfriend, thank you very much! I of course chuckled in my head and thought , “Is this guy for real?!” Well, after glancing at his very serious expression I quickly knew he wasn’t messin’ and that I should probably listen. No one else in my “dating” world had ever been so upfront with me, I suddenly got an overwhelming feeling that this was something different, something better.

Drum roll please… The three “non-negotiables” in order of importance were: 1. He needed a woman who would put God first above everything else 2. A woman that always communicated with him no matter what and 3. A woman that didn’t smoke. I had to quit smoking!! EEEEKKKKKKK. I agreed to the first two right away and said that I would do my best with number 3, (LITTLE did he know that my “best” took me a year and some gumballs to accomplish. He must have really liked me, not just kinda, in order to deal with my “trying” to quit for so long). From the very beginning of our relationship I knew this was no ordinary partnership. I have felt so blessed to have found someone that knows absolutely everything about me and that can still love me in spite of all my flaws, my past, and how oddly shaped my head is. Someone that makes me grow in such amazing ways and that lets me help him grow in his path as well. I can’t begin to tell you how stubborn and “independent” I had to be in my growing up in order to survive. So when I started my relationship as a wife with Doug it was very hard for me to allow myself to share myself with him in every decision of our lives. That was a big struggle with me, completely submitting to him because my whole life I thought that was a bad thing. I thought WHY should you need to submit yourself to your mate?! I know now that it’s actually a very important thing in marriage or in a relationship for that matter, so long as the submission is from both sides. I know there is a struggle when you make the decision to share your life with someone else for the rest of your lives. You might feel as if you’re being stripped from your identity. IT’s NOT , you are about to embark in one of the most wonderful challenges of your life, learning the balance of being yourself, while growing into the person that your love makes you be. So it is imperative that you choose a partner that makes you grow and change into a better you. Allowing yourself to morph into the best partner you can be for them. Like learning to like the other persons music , or learning about sports because you know it’s important to them. These changes are not a measure of weakness, they are a measure of strength. Strength that you have for loving someone so much that you are willing to adapt your life so that they are happy and trust that they will do the same for you. I’ve had so much fun in my marriage discovering different facets of our relationship, different sides of myself, of Doug. I’ve had fun working through the rough times (and trust me there have been rough times)! It has been such an amazing experience because we know that after the storm has calmed and we’ve thoroughly worked a problem out, we have learned so much more about each other individually and as a couple. And we have the certainty that we can overcome the rough times by always putting God first in every situation. It’s been interesting to find out how different marriage is from what I THOUGHT it would be. It’s nowhere near what I thought. It’s a hundred times as wonderful and it can be a hundred times as challenging as I had imagined. But when the day ends and night falls we are left just us two alone, it’s as if the world disappears and we were made for each other laying there knowing that we have a buddy for a never ending sleepover until death due as part. Making the choice to love this one person for the rest of our life and continue to help them, and make them fall in love with us time and time again is a daily quest you much partake in. Love is a strange thing when you stop thinking about it as they show it in the movies. Love in its raw form is the most amazing thing any human being could ever experience, but you have to open your heart and go into it blindly in order to experience the full effect. No walls, no filters, no thinking “I don’t want to get hurt”. Because that you will. But the hurt will make the good times feels oh so much better. Enjoy your love very much for a loving relationship can be the most rewarding thing you can cultivate in a life time.

Stay saucy!

Happy Fathers Day

Hello ya’ll! Happy Monday to you! I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Yesterday was father’s day! A day to celebrate those brave souls that are fathers. I thank God for my father that I love very very much and for my father in law that is an extremely important person in my life, if I didn’t know any better I would think God just blessed me with 2 AMAZING fathers from birth! But I would LOVE to dedicate this day to my husband. Even though he is not my father he already is a father to our little girl.

I was reading, What To Expect When You’re Expecting and came across a little sliver of a chapter titled: For Dad. I was first surprised that there was something written in there for the dad since he doesn’t deal with the physical portion of the pregnancy. However, as Doug and I read on a wave of shame rushed over me. This WHOLE time I’ve been feeling, woe is me, and the “oh sure HE got to have the “fun” part of this baby making shenanigan and I get the waddle like a penguin portion of it, NO FAIR !” Reading and getting educated made me see the light! I learned that men just as women, go through a hormonal change during a pregnancy. It’s proven fact that their testosterone levels go down and that they get estrogen surging through their very manly veins, making them all mushy and saying things such as, “Oh this is such a cute bib, let’s put it on the registry” and such. God made is so that daddies to be, would literally be more sensitive! How amazing is that!? That got me thinking of my husband and how he’s been through out my entire pregnancy. I felt so guilty for not praising him for being pregnant too. While I’m here having all these physical symptoms he has been experiencing them through me! What is worse? Having them or being a caring loving husband seeing your wife in so much discomfort and pain and not being able to do ANYTHIGN about it?! Whoa! Thinking that just took my breath away at how strong the man has to be during his partners pregonnes. Dude, men want to be the heroes in things. They want to be able to slay the dragon for their lovies! How can you do that when you are helpless and have no way of soothing your partners pain or crankiness other than catering completely to her cravings, uncontrollable moodiness and having to lie through your teeth when the inevitable questions start coming. My question , “Does this dress make me look huge?” Doug’s thoughts…. (NO, but that huge belly of yours does), Doug’s actual words, “NO honey you are beautiful no matter what”. Oh gosh I can’t even imagine having to be the guy part in all of this! What emotional turmoil. And to boot you’re not even the one that gets all the attention or the pity or gets to cut in line for the bathroom or gets a baby shower thrown for you (not that any guy would really enjoy one, but how about a party celebrating the poor fella? Nope there’s nothing) . Daddies to be, hardly get acknowledged and what a shame, they go through as much as women do, in different ways but they do. So this is my attempt to acknowledge fatherhood from the very beginning. Thank you all the fathers out there ,YOU are strong men! And if you are anything like my husband, you men are SAINTS! I could not have asked for anyone better to take care of me and the baby. Doug has been more amazing than I ever could of imagined, thank you for that honey. People say that fatherhood starts when the father meets their baby. I say they are wrong. Fathers are just amazing enough that they put their emotions on the back burner for the sake of their very pregnant partners! I hope all you fathers out there had an amazing day and that you were celebrated on and loved on a ton.

Make today a day to rejoice and to be ALIVE! Make the choice to make it a super saucy day, only you can!!!

Friendship

This week I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the meaning of friendship. My favorite musical, Wicked, has a song about friendship that every time I listen to it I just want to cry because it resonates so deep in my heart and it reminds me of all of my friends that I love so much. The start of the song goes a little bit like this:“I've heard it said, that people come into our lives for a reason . Bringing something we must learn and we are led to those who help us most to grow If we let them and we help them in return. Well, I don't know if I believe that's true, but I know I'm who I am today, because I knew you.” I have a feeling that there are no mistakes about the people we meet, when we meet them and how long they are in our lives. We are all connected in some way you and me to give help to one another. When I look at my life and the friends that are in it, I see a colorful palette of friendships that help my life in many diverse ways. I have my friends that tell me the truth no matter if it hurts or not, I have friends that give me the biggest laughs of my life, I have friends that I can talk to about musicals and can do REALLY dorky things with , I have friends that are more level headed than me and help me find the “adult” within me. The friend that I talk to once in a great while but still have tons to say to. The younger friends that “look” up to me for being an upstanding adult. HA And there are the friendships that have been built that are so strong at the core that they feel as if they were my own blood brothers and sisters, friends that know every single thing about me and still love me for who I am and help me continue my growth. We are all here to need and love people. No one person can survive without the contact of another human being. We need to be loved , we need to feel accepted and we need to feel care and concern from and for someone else. I thank God for all the people he’s put in my life. And this week in particular I’ve been thinking of all the people that I know and that surround me and I’ve been analyzing and wondering what they’ve done for me and my growth and vice versa. It’s so cool to know that EVERY person is placed in your life for a reason. Think today of the people who surround you and what you’ve learned from them. Thank them for their friendship because you are who you are today because of them in some sort of way.

Thank you to all of you, yes I’m talking to YOU if I’ve met you and you’ve had any part in my life I want to thank you for your interaction with me because you’ve made me grow in many ways. There is a definite love for all of you that goes beyond what words could say. I’m who I am today because I knew you. And I can’t ever thank you enough!