The Best Year With You

At 7:00 a.m. on March 23, 2023 my big sister did my hair and makeup as I sat in white satin feather lined pajamas. A few hours later, I skipped off of a cruise ship and into a limo. Heaven touched earth at 10:30 a.m. as Stephen and I held hands and said "I do" with our families and childhood best friends as witnesses of an intimate ceremony on a sunny beach in the Bahamas.

One day a few months later, I was on FaceTime with a good friend of mine who is single. We were talking about the talking stage, dating, and marriage. She got serious and said, "Krisi, I have to ask you a question about you and Stephen." I said, "Oh ask me anything!" She asked me if the first year of marriage is as bad and stressful as everyone says it is. She was already the third friend to ask me this. It saddens me so deeply to think that marriage is something that so many women fear, because people make it sound so bad. I was delighted to answer her, "Oh no! It's the best thing ever! It's so fun!" I told her all my favorite parts so far, why it's the best thing ever, and we talked about this awful first-year stereotype.

For some reason, when I got engaged, it opened the flood gates for everyone to tell me how much they hate their husbands. And when I insisted "no really, I love Stephen as a person" they would laugh and say, "oh just wait until he leaves the toilet seat up." Or some variation of that "just wait" sentence.

One of the best things about my husband is how similar we are. We went through premarital counseling and found ourselves, our opinions, and our views pretty identical. We have the same exact sense of humor, we both love to sing and be silly, both of our lives are built on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ, and we agreed on how the household and finances would be run in our home. We even voted for the same niche 3rd party green candidate in the 2018 election. I guess I shouldn't really tell you that, but we found it kind of crazy! If that's not enough for you, we are also both the red headed middle child of our families, with both of us having an older sister and a younger brother. Needless to say, we understand each other on a core level!

Although I knew that what these women were confessing to me would not be my reality, it did encourage me to do some work before the wedding. I made sure to set realistic expectations. Stephen and I were long distance from month 3 of dating until we got married PLUS I had to move 13 hours from everyone I know and love- so I prepared myself for a hard adjustment to living together. I prepared myself for the arguments people said we would have over chores and schedules (especially with a ministry job), the adjustment of not having enough alone time after living alone for nearly a year, but also the adjustment of potential loneliness because I knew I wouldn't have any family or best friends.

But it never came.

Maybe that's because I also did some work on my type A/control freak issues. I decided that who cares if he doesn't load the dishwasher the same way I do and not as many dishes can fit in it? Like really, who does care? How could I ever get annoyed at him for leaving the toilet seat up? Just think about it. Shouldn't it annoy men more that every single time, they have to lift it AND put it back down, and we don't have to do anything? Can we just be practical for a second?

I've also caught myself realizing how resentment can creep in and how I can keep it far from me by simply staying right where I am. One day Stephen and I were having a conversation after dinner and he got up to start on the dishes. I realized that the dishwasher needed to be unloaded, reloaded, and THEN the pots and pans washed, so I almost jumped up to help him. Then I realized that we were mid conversation and he was not giving me the side eye or the "look." He didn't ask me for help, because he didn't need help. When he finished I said, "wow that was a lot of dishes thank you so much for getting them all done." He replied, "yeah, no problem honey." This got me thinking about how much women sometimes try to take away from their husbands helping them. If I had jumped in to help him get it all done, I most likely would've sat down that night thinking, "I already did all the laundry and cooked dinner and then I had to help with the dishes too! This feels pretty uneven!" When in reality I didn't have to. He did not ask me to. He did not need or want me to. How often are we sabotaging ourselves by jumping up when not asked to, because we think we can do it better and quicker, or because we want to be viewed as a good and helpful wife? Have you tried staying seated when your husband starts a chore and you've already done yours? I love practicing that!

Stephen and I have been married for exactly one year. Half of people say the first year of marriage is the worst year of it all. That if you can get through that period of adjustment, you can get through the rest. The other half of people will read this post and say "oh please you're still in the honey moon phase! The first year of marriage was the best we ever had!"

I think that it goes both ways. Fine, maybe we shouldn't exclaim from the rooftops how easy and joyful marriage is, because everyone is different, not everyone chooses to settle down with the right spouse, and bizarre life circumstances can happen; but I really don't think that we should train young twenty year olds to expect the first year of marriage to be the worst and most hard year they'll ever experience. I strongly believe that we should not immediately start dropping snide remarks about our spouses when someone young gets engaged. Instead, we should share the good and the work. The "it's so fun living with your best friend and doing life together!" paired with the "I strongly recommend premarital counseling and a spouse who has God as their number one priority."

I think of the song that says "Christ Is My Firm Foundation." He is the rock on which we both stand. We entered this marriage as adults with full time jobs, both of us having lived on our own, and both fully dedicated to ministry. We both came into this with God as our number one priority, and the very thing we are living for. With that foundation and set of morals and convictions, it doesn't really matter what the world says. It doesn't really matter what the statistics say. Whether we're in our honey moon phase or not, we both feel so deeply blessed and grateful to have a best friend in each other, that we're not going to let silly little things drive us apart.

The greatest commandment is to love. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Maybe sometimes we forget that this is most important first in our own homes. If my husband and I are close to the Lord, if we love Him with every ounce of our heart, soul, and mind, and we choose to love each other as our very own selves, nothing on God’s green earth can come between that. It’s impossible to be disconnected and dissatisfied when you’re seeking to serve your spouse over yourself.

Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. – Mark 10:9

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken. – Ecclesiastes 4:12

I remember the first time we invited some new friends over to our new house. I suggested that we should invite them over the next day for dinner and dessert, so we did. It was about 10pm on a Friday and we were going to head our separate ways for a bit before bed. Before he even turned on his computer, he realized I was going to use my time to clean, and without a word he got up to help me. We spent two hours power cleaning our house. He never asked me what needed to be done or told me it was silly to want to clean so much for a few friends to come over. He even went outside to scrub the dining room windows at midnight because they were super streaky from some pesticide he had sprayed. I took a moment when cleaning one of the guest bathrooms to praise God with deep gratitude- for a partner who jumps in to help before I can ask, can find what needs to be done without asking me, and sees it as no big deal. I know not every wife has that. I have immense gratitude for the partner I have.

We always say that we're grateful we both lived on our own before getting married. We were both already used to cooking dinner every night, doing all the laundry, and doing all of the other chores and cleaning on our own. So now that we are together in marriage, it feels like anything taken off of the base load is a nice relief.

I think with a lot of marriages, there's this unspoken burden of default or expected responsibility. You've seen it, you've heard it, it's all over the mom pages, whether satire or not. By the grace of God, that is not the story of my marriage. I know it is for a lot of women, maybe even most women, so for that I am very grateful. I think gratitude for an equal, loving, healthy marriage should always be expressed, as much as it possible can be. Every single night my husband thanks me for cooking dinner, and then I thank him for washing the dishes. Gratitude inspires us, grounds us, satisfies us, and finds a way to point us back to God.

So, happy one year of marriage to my favorite person on earth. You take care of me, you lead me, you teach me, and you giggle with me. You even feed into my fake delusion the I'm a better singer than you. Because I am. You sit with me when I need to cry, never judge me, and always give me as much attention, hugs, and "I love you's" as I need. I deeply value your level head, patience, and ability to figure anything out. You are so intelligent, kind, gentle, and hilarious.

It has been the best year with you. Very often, I look over at you and think how crazy it is that I'm just bebopping around building a whole life with my best friend who is my perfect match. It constantly reminds me what a good, loving, perfect Father that God is to have brought me you to share my life with. I love being your wife!

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Today, to celebrate our anniversary, Stephen and I started our morning with some quality time walking a 5k together, attended church, went out for sushi, and ate the top tier of our defrosted wedding cake! Thanks for reading this blog today to honor the wonderful spouse I've been given :) Does this count as my "paper" gift?

I pray that this blog touched you in some way. Maybe inspiring you to let go of petty silly things or to stop and give gratitude over the every day things, every day, out loud. Either way, my greatest hope is that it encourages you to only speak life over your partner and your marriage. I love you and I'm praying for the strength of your marriage, and that it would always have God at the center.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or prayer requests, you can head over to my "about me" page, scroll down, and send me a message! I'll see you next month on the 23rd for my next blog!

Love ya! Bye!

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“If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

– 1 Corinthians 13:2-7

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself."

 – Ephesians 5:21-28