Love Is . . .

I used to collect these little comics, ages ago when our relationship started turning into something more serious. Like, after the first date.

Falling in love was easy. I didn't have to try. It just happened. Pretty quickly we knew that this was more than a temporary attraction. This was the stuff marriage was made of.

I've learned a lot since those days of fledgling love. 

No one told me then that love was a choice.

It was a verb, I had that hammered into me.

That I would often need to choose to love was not something I was prepared for.

At one month I bemoaned the fact that we went from a couple that had been dating for 3 years to a couple that had been married a month, which seemed so insignificant. As if milestones made the marriage.

At one year, I turned my nose up at people that still called us 'newlyweds.'

At two years, we moved back to the United States. Still relative newlyweds as I look back at it now.

At five years, we had a one year old -- and soon another on the way.

At ten years, marriage became the side show as we constantly tried to stay afloat as parents of three with the fourth on the way, and part-time parents to a dozen other boys from Sunday night through Friday.

At fifteen years we celebrated in Maui, while my in-laws watched our kids and finished potty training our fifth.

At twenty years I felt like we had been married forever. Only old people were married that long. Maybe that was the problem, I just felt old.

Now, we approach twenty-five this year.

Our marriage has grown so much in the last five years. Mainly in the last year.

Relationships are always cyclical and the many ups and downs are to be expected, but lately we've been on a pretty big upswing and I thought in the month surrounding our 25th I would share a little of what God is doing.