Our anniversary, a month ago:)

This year on our anniversary I just felt overwhelmed at my "luck" in having married Kevin. It has taken me a long time to appreciate him fully, and I'm sure I'm not to "fully" yet. For whatever reason, selfishness?, when we first got married, I just didn't get it! I'm so grateful Kevin was patient and forgiving! And patient and forgiving. Long-suffering is I guess the best word. I'm not sure if everyone is like this but I tend to be hardest on the people closest to me. I want things to be perfect and warm and fuzzy now and take it very seriously when I think something is amiss. I'm learning this is attitude is way too intense, and not what the Savior and Heavenly Father intended when they sent us to earth. Yes, we are here to grow but that doesn't mean a step backwards means all the steps forward you've made are for naught and that you'll never get where you're going. Thinking back to eight years ago at this time, phew, I'm so glad we're where we've come to! I know we're on the same team no matter what and that is THE most wonderful feeling, having someone as remarkable as Kevin in my court. When we found out for sure that Kevin would be working for UNC as a pediatric ophthalmologist after fellowship, I had this sort of paranoid feeling. It just felt too good to be true to have made it to this point as a team, to have a job in a year's time, and to be so in love with this guy. I was so grateful when he made it home from his last day commuting to Fayetteville. I was just sure he was going to get in an accident and die. Luckily that proved to be a ridiculous and paranoid notion that I'm sure was planted there by crazy pregnancy hormones.

When Kevin and I were first married, and I was being super hard on him, in my mind if not out loud, I had a few qualities I thought he lacked or could be improved upon. Or course now I realize that was a short-coming of my own! Anyway, we read each other's patriarchal blessings one night, as newlyweds are wont to do, and as old fuddy duddy married people should do more often, and found that every single one of the things that I thought was something for him to work on was actually listed as a strength of his. So either that meant it was already a strength and I was just amiss in not recognizing it, or it was a quality he hadn't developed yet but was a weaker area that would develop into a strength. I think it took me aback then but I haven't really thought about and poured over the idea until recently. What a blessing to be a team and have both of your strengths to work with, and have both of you to work on your weaknesses, if you can do so with love. I'm grateful to feel like we can gently help each other now without being hurtful, or hurt, which really was out of the question when we first got married. It's overwhelming to think I've been entrusted with such a person! I hope we can become better at expressing our affection and that our children know, and will know, how much we think of each other. (You hear that kids? I'm talking to you!)