the year of wood

5 years ago we said, "I do".

5 years ago we celebrated our love with our dearest friends and family.

5 years ago we began this journey of marriage.

I talked about our gift giving strategy for our anniversaries back here and this year is no different. It is the year of wood. I'm not quite ready to reveal our gift to each other yet, but I can tell you that it is a gift that we will be able to enjoy for a long time together.

Until the gift reveal, I will leave you with some of the things that have helped us make it this far in marriage, loving each other more and more each day and still enjoying every single day we get to go through this life together.

Strength

In the last year, than any other year that we have been together, we have had to call upon our strength individually and as a couple. There have been emotional, physical, and mental challenges to our strength that have tried to defeat us (read more about those here, here, here, here, and here). White it finally feels like we are coming out the other end from these challenges and are even stronger than when we started, it has made me realize that this is a quality that is prevalent in our marriage. I guess you never really have to think about strength until you need it and then it makes you realize how much you actually have or can conjure up in a time that it is needed the most. In so many ways, we are getting stronger, but more importantly, we are realizing the amount of strength that was already within us. Ain't nobody going to bring us down!

Support

If you celebrated with us at our wedding, you witnessed our vows where we promised to always live a "Team First" marriage (you can see more from our wedding ceremony here). Basically, Andy and I are the team and all decisions are made between the team members. This means that we try not to let others or any outside factors in to our decision making process in our marriage. This seems basic, but it can be really challenging. Between family members who have strong opinions, friends who do things differently, or even pressures from society and media can influence decisions if you let them. There have definitely been times where one or both of us have struggled with this promise, but overall, it is the main foundation that we continually revisit in our relationship and one of the reasons we are still going strong after 5 years.

Communication

This is the number one thing that I would swear hands down keeps a relationship together. It is the #1 advice I give to new couples getting married or even friends that are looking at how to make their relationships better. The most important thing is to talk about EVERYTHING from the littlest thought or idea in your head to the big scary subjects and do this often.

With that being said, it is definitely not as easy as it sounds, especially in order to communicate effectively. There needs to be time set aside to communicate often and the "scary" stuff needs to be addressed as often as possible. Of course, this doesn't mean that we are always very good at this, but we know it's what we need to do when things are feeling even the slightest bit off in our relationship. Sometimes there's tears, but we always come out the other side feeling better than we did before we let out what was on our minds.

Friendship

This is where it all started. We nurtured our friendship for 5 years before we ever started dating, but it was a slow burn that eventually ignited and brought us together. Once we were both in the right place, everything just clicked. We were able to fast forward much of our relationship because we already knew each other so well and we were very comfortable with one another. Today, we are still the best of friends and enjoy each others company over anyone else.

Overall, it feels like we've made it. It feels like our marriage is legit now that we have gotten to this milestone. 5 years!

Stay tuned for details of our anniversary celebration. It was a night filled with many surprises and lots of love!

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