I am no stranger to storybook romance.  Marrying at twenty to the sweetest man, I am blessed to be familiar with love – love as a falling and a pursuit and a passion.  We were introduced for the first time on a cold February evening, bundled up as we stood outside while snow gently fell around us.  We stood there with our cherry-red noses, enamored with each other.  It felt like our own real Lifetime movie.

I am also no stranger to going against the grain and doing life differently than others.  One month later we were engaged.  We were married three months after that, with vows breathed in the little country church I was born into.

We both entered marriage in love with being in love.  I adored the romance, comfort and support a spouse offered.  I loved waking up beside him each morning and laying down beside him each night.  I loved that he was my best friend and knew me better than anyone.  We had our own unwritten language and could share a look or a word that no one else would understand but WE knew what it meant.  I loved how he could make me laugh more than anyone else.

Falling in love is the most blissful feeling.  With each new discovery in your relationship, you feel yourself falling more and more in love.  You just know, in your heart of hearts, that you’ve found the right person to spend the rest of your life with.  You’ve found your person.  Your days are filled with dreams of getting married, writing their last name after your first name, having a family and sitting on the porch swing holding hands while watching your grand-kids play in the yard.  You are certain these feelings will last forever.  But they didn’t.

You start off optimistic and in love, then real life happens all around you.

Eventually the laundry piles up, the kids are hanging on your leg screaming, you’re both sleep deprived from the new baby, the house looks like a tornado went through and the bills are more than your income.  In that moment you feel your happily ever after begin to wear off.

You begin to wonder if you even married the right person.   It seems everything he does gets on your nerves, from the way he leaves his socks on the stairs to the way he chews his food.  The person you are married to isn’t the same person you fell in love with.  You begin to doubt your choice.  You look at other couples around you, so happily in love, and you wonder why you don’t have that.  You feel life isn’t fair, at least yours isn’t.  Before long, you can feel your heart slowly drifting away from his.

Sometimes the waters are so rough, you wonder if you’ll make it through.

Slowly over time bricks pile up one by one — a small comment that hurts or being too tired to share details from the day.  Each one doesn’t seem like a big deal, but over days and weeks they pile up to create a wall.  Sure, these bricks can be torn down, but it takes vulnerability.  Someone has to reach out to the other person with a hug, kiss or a kind word.  The same fatigue from the everyday stress of life, the stress which allowed the wall to go up, makes it hard to tear it down.

Throughout the years, I’ve collected every card and love letter my husband has written me.  I have them all safely tucked away but on occasion will pull an old one out and pour over the words.  It’s in that moment, between the lines, I can see this love of ours has, without a doubt, changed over time.

It isn’t because it’s any less.  It isn’t because we’re walking through a valley.  It isn’t because the laundry is piled sky high and the bills are mounting.  It is something different.

Throughout the past twenty-four years we’ve made a conscious choice to daily say that we still do, even now.  Especially now.

He has continued to choose me, even on days I wear sweat pants and a messy bun.  He has continued to choose me, throughout every sickness and surgery.  He has continued to choose me, even when I’m undeserving.

And I’ve chosen him.

Love is strung together choices.  The feelings, undoubtedly, will rise and fall.  Being in love with love will fade as the toughness of life becomes a reality.  As life goes on we all change, we grow, we mature, and life changes us.  But marriage is not meant to be a lifetime commitment to fairy tale love alone.  Marriage is designed to be a repetitive I do, a daily commitment of choosing us over me.  You choose to love who they are at each point in life, not only who they used to be.

Marriage was designed specifically by God to mirror the relationship between Christ and His church.  In marriage, we are acting out a living parable to help our children and others around us grasp what God is like in a more concrete way.

Over the years God has softened and shaped my heart.  He has shown me that I need to love my husband without unreal, fairy tale expectations.  He has shown me that marriage means intentionally looking for love.  It’s in those moments I am flooded with displays of love right in front of me.  Love is the endless miles he’s driven me to doctor appointments.  Love is the hug, kiss and butt slap I get when he walks in the door.  Love is the laundry he does.  Love is his understanding that somehow 8 backyard chickens suddenly became 30.  Love is his support of all my crazy Pinterest ideas.  It’s in these ways and thousands of others that he shows me, he tells me, he loves me.

I am so thankful our love story has so many chapters left to be written in it.  As your love story is written by the ultimate Author of love, you might just be surprised at the romance you find.  And just how much your husband does, in fact, resemble prince charming.  No matter what the situation, or what mess it may hold, he’s still my hero and I’m still his girl.

So often we sit together just enjoying the stillness.  We refer to the place we’re in now as the good years.  The good years where peace lives daily.  It wasn’t always this way in our marriage.  We’ve come full circle, and the journey would not be complete without each part.

I remember that first time I saw him at a mutual friends house.  His t-shirt and bright eyes, the way he made me laugh with ease, his confidence, it sucked me in.  My attraction to this “bad boy” shocked me, this dark mysterious guy who ignored the world and rocked multiple tattoos.  I thought to myself that it would be hilarious if I were so immediately attracted to him because he was supposed to be my husband.  Actually, that was my second thought.  My first thought was that my Mama would never approve of this tattooed wild boy.

Three months later we were married, with vows breathed in the little country church I was born into.

The first year was everything I imagined it could be, but then as life took some tough shots at us, we quickly found out we weren’t equipped to withstand the storm.

The next several years were rough at best. I don’t even remember what caused all the arguments, but I remember the anger — my anger, his anger, bucket loads of tears, slammed doors, sleepless nights, souls aching and distance.

Our marriage was dying.

It was like a slow, silent kind of death.  One we were both uncomfortably aware of but unwilling to speak about.

Hopelessness consumed our days.  We wore hurt and brokenness daily like winter jackets.

Our marriage seemed comprised of arguments, an unwillingness to understand each other and selfish hearts.

We were living in the same house and unsure of what the future looked like.

On a warm summer day the silence was broken and we found ourselves at a crossroads between divorce and reconciliation.

We spent days being swallowed up by anger.  We spent days having tear soaked faces.  We spent days having hopelessness walk beside us.

But then GOD.

There was a night when I was at my breaking point.  I got in my car and started driving.  I ended up on a hill in the middle of the woods.  The sky was covered with stars and I could see for miles around.  I listened to hymns, sang along, cried my eyes out and talked to God for hours on end.  When I left the hill that night I had something new, HOPE!

I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my husband what the conversation between God and I held.

In that moment we were catapulted into trusting Him more than we ever had to in the past.

We handed our marriage to God, knowing we couldn’t revive it ourselves.  And with that, God breathed new life into our dying marriage.  He showed us both forgiveness in a way we had never known and restored our marriage, making it better than it ever had been in the past.

The new marriage we had was amazing.  It was filled with compromise, hope, selflessness and love.

Fifteen years later, our marriage is strong and solid, securely set now on a firm foundation. Perfect? No, is any marriage truly perfect?  Better than my twenty-year-old, naive self dreamed? Without a doubt!

Sometimes we sit and reminisce about the in-between years.  We talk about those gut-wrenching hard times.  We talk about how we couldn’t have made it without God.  And we talk about where we are now.  There is something so precious about struggling together and coming out on the other side hand-in-hand.

I want you to know God can see into the deepest depths of your heart.  He knows exactly what it will take to restore hope into your heart, into your life and into your marriage.  He meets us where we are and loves us just as we are, sinners.  He showers us with his amazing grace.  We have a God who knows how we feel, and really cares.  He knows our doubts and hopelessness.  He can help when we’re willing to bring those things to him.  God walks with us during our hopeless times and never leaves us.

Romans 8:28 says And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.  Our marriages aren’t exempt from this.  When we are in the middle of a trial in marriage, it’s hard to see how God could ever use it for good.  But He has promised to use them for good, and He is faithful to keep His word.  Give your marriage over to God and allow Him to heal the hopeless and the hardness.  He will bring beauty from the ashes.