Our wedding anniversary

(This post is oh, about a week late.  Moving on.)

Tuesday, the 21st, was our wedding anniversary.  It has been three years since we said those memorable words.

I Do.

And I still do.

Things have not been all bright and happy the entire three years.  My first year of law school put added stress on us but we adjusted.  We figured things out and when things got overwhelming (which they did), we figured out how to work through it.  Ian just about had it with me leaving equal packets all over the house (as I was drinking mass quantities of coffee to stay awake reading at odd hours of the day and night).  I had never seen him so angry...and over equal packets!  That year was all about learning what caused the other person to tick, and how we each feel most loved.  (I learned to throw my equal packets away.)

Then, our second year of marriage was pretty awesome.  I got knocked up and we spent our second year going through all of the joys of pregnancy.  We enjoyed the time we had left as just the two of us.  We prepared for becoming a family of three.  We grew up a little bit and stopped thinking of only "us."  I prepared to be a mom and a law student.  I was able to balance being a wife, being pregnant, and the demands of law school fairly well. 

Then, Luca came along during our third year of marriage.  They say having a child flips your world upside down.  Boy, that's an understatement!  This past year has been stressful.  That first year of marriage, when I was in law school, was not even a taste of the stress we would have to endure.  When we first heard L's diagnosis, we huddled together, and had a discussion.  We prayed for a lot in those early days.  For Luca.  But also for our marriage.  We knew that losing a child, or having a child with medical difficulties could wear on any marriage, even the strongest.  We learned that the divorce rate for those who lose a child or who raise a child with special needs is higher than the average divorce rate.  We vowed to work through it all...together.  We prayed that we would have what it takes to make things work, for us, and for Luca.

It has not been easy since that conversation.  We bicker more than we ever had.  We have moments where we each feel alone, him from being the only one working, me from being the primary caregiver.  But, we also have experienced a love we never had.  And true, overwhelming, life altering joy.  We love our child in a way neither of us expected.  And we love each other in a new way.  It's a love through admiration for the other person.  We admire eachother for what we each have had to do to be a great parent for Luca. 

And through it all, it has been worth it.  It is not the life we expected when we said those words.  But we would still say them over and over again, knowing what we know now.  And at the end of the day, there is no other person we would want on this path than eachother.

(Pictures taken while out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary.  We went to The Black Olive - it was the first dinner just the two of us since my birthday in November.  It was SO nice to have a date night!)