When you first get engaged and when you are about to get married, you’ll often hear people say, “The first year of marriage is the hardest.” That may be true sometimes for certain reasons, but we believe you should go into marriage with reverence, respect, and with the expectation that YOU make it what it will be! The first year doesn’t HAVE to be hard. Don’t get us wrong, you have to work on your marriage & make it everything it possibly can be. It can be challenging, but you should have FUN! (Look at those babies in the photo- whoa!)
There were times during our first year of marriage that we looked at one another & said, “Wow, this is so hard like everyone said. . . ” with a huge smile on our faces & then we busted up laughing. We can close our eyes and picture it. We were living in a duplex at the time. We would each get home from work at our respective jobs (we weren’t self-employed and working together at the time; we had full-time regular people jobs lol) and we would begin to make dinner together. We had a bunch of little notecards with Pampered Chef recipes on them. They were all very decadent & delicious. We’d take turns adding ingredients, tossing in spices or butter or eggs, all the while telling one another about the antics of our coworkers that day or imagining what it’d be like if we won the lottery and didn’t have to go to our day jobs anymore. We’d eat once the meal was ready- usually while sitting close together on our hand-me-down gold couch with red flecks in it from the 1960s (yes, you read that year right & it’s not a typo) watching an episode of Friends (we have them all on DVD) or Breaking Bad on Netflix. We’d cuddle with our pug Norris (Punky wasn’t around yet) as he snored loudly on our laps.
Then we’d look at one another expectantly. Sometimes Josh would wink. I’d laugh. “Is it time?” he’d ask. I’d scrunch up my nose, squint my eyes, & shrug my shoulders as if making a monumental decision. “Should we? What if we can’t stop & we don’t get any sleep?” “Let’s do it! I think we can go all the way this time,” he’d answer with his adorable, contagious smile. Then we’d high five & he’d turn on the Nintendo Wii we’d gotten as a wedding shower gift.
It was time. Time for that pudgy mustached plumber & his best lanky friend dressed in green to go for an adventure. Mario & Luigi against the ever-agonizing foe Bowser. Josh was Mario & I was Luigi. It took us awhile, but we conquered that entire game together that first year of our marriage.
We spoke lots of harsh & tough words that first year of marriage. . . all directed at an animated fire breathing enemy named Bowser (or, if you prefer, King Koopa), and we put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears toward our goal- to save that Princess Peach. As misogynistic as that plotline is, we enjoyed every minute of our Wii time together.
I realize this blog post is silly, but so was most of our first year of marriage. We laughed. We played. We took walks with Norris around the neighborhood. We talked about hopes & dreams. We got to know one another even better than we had for the five years previous to our wedding day.
All I’m saying is that, yes, to have a thriving marriage that improves as the years go by, you have to work at it & it isn’t easy sometimes. But you also have to be silly sometimes. Be friends. Laugh a lot. Play silly games. Don’t take everything so seriously. And don’t let the foreboding words of well-meaning family members, friends, or acquaintances about how hard the first year of marriage is scare you. Don’t allow those comments to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. Enjoy yourselves. Be happy. Be merrily married.
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