Fifteen Years!

For our 14th wedding anniversary last year, I wrote about how our relationship works. I also included many links to more anniversary posts with all kinds of wedding day memories (pictures, etc.). Go have a gander if you'd like. This post is mostly about gratitude, and it does get a bit sappy! Okay, a lot sappy. I can't help it. I'm a Romantic at heart! 

Today marks our Fifteenth Wedding Anniversary.

[Gah! Fifteen years!? Already!?]

When I think about all the things I've done in the last fifteen years, I am amazed at how blessed I truly am. But mostly, I'm just surprised at how quickly the time has passed.

I've heard people say that as you age, time speeds up. Of course, I didn't understand what they meant, because it always felt like time was so slow! I was always waiting for something to happen. Waiting to be old enough. Waiting to find a husband (I know I didn't have to wait long!). Waiting to be a mother. Waiting for... whatever. But now that I'm fifteen years from my teenage years and fifteen years from being single and fifteen years away from an almost completely different person, I can say it with confidence: time is speeding up (see previous post!).

And it's okay.

"We're all a little weird.  And life is a little weird.  And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love."  ~Robert Fulghum, True Love

"Oh, hasten not this loving act,

Rapture where self and not-self meet:

My life has been the awaiting you,

Your footfall was my own heart's beat."

~Paul Valéry

I'm building a life with Brandon and it's turning out to be pretty awesome. Oh, sure, we have our hard and frustrating times. But our good times outweigh and overshadow our bad times, and I think that is what is most important!

We have both changed over the years, we've grown apart and grown together --you know how the roller coaster of life can be, dear reader --but I'm grateful that through all of it, we have been loyal and true to the covenants we made with God and with each other all those years ago.

"The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.  You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.  Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough."  ~George Moore

"Love is like a friendship caught on fire.  In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering.  As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable."  ~Bruce Lee

I'm grateful that I listened to the Holy Ghost when I asked God where I should go for college. I'm grateful my father felt prompted to suggest BYU. I'm grateful for the experiences I had throughout high school and that first year of college that prepared me to be ready for marriage when I met Brandon. Honestly, above all, I'm just grateful that Heavenly Father guided Brandon to be in my life and that we were both in a time and place that made our marriage in the temple possible.

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."  ~Emily Brontë

"A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy."  ~George Jean Nathan

We have such a beautiful family. I can't begin to describe how grateful I am for our children without getting incredibly emotional. They have all been such a joy in our lives! Each precious child has made us better parents, and I can't imagine life without them in it. How did I live without those faces?

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."  ~Elizabeth Stone

"The most important thing she'd learned over the years was that there was no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one."  ~Jill Churchill

I'm grateful that Brandon and I are on the same page when it comes to the most important things in our lives. He honors the Priesthood he holds, and we both have faith in our eternal marriage and in our Savior. I always wanted to be a mother first and foremost, and Brandon has always worked so hard so that I could stay home to raise our babies. I am so grateful for his dedication to our family!

"How did it happen that their lips came together?  How does it happen that birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill?  A kiss, and all was said." ~Victor Hugo

"I learned the real meaning of love.  Love is absolute loyalty.  People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades.  You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them.  And that's love, even if it doesn't seem very exciting."  ~Sylvester Stallone

He loves me. I cherish his love for me. I'm not very good at appreciating it at times, but he still loves me. He dates me and wants to be near me. He chooses me every day. He makes the kids sit together at church so he can sit next to me, and he holds my hand. He buys me flowers and takes me on trips and even when he's tired, he'll listen to be jabber away forever about all my insignificant (although not to me) nothings. I'm so grateful for his love!

"If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I."  ~Michel de Montaigne

Most importantly, I am so grateful for Brandon's existence. Knowing that we have been sealed together for time and for all eternity gives me so much peace. Brandon is one in a million and I'm grateful he's in my life.

I love you, Brandon! Happy Anniversary! 

"Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be..." ~Robert Browning