Year Three!

Year three has come and gone in a flash.  I feel like we just got married last week!  

I've read that years 3, 5, and 7 are generally the hardest years in marriage.  I would assume it’s because year three is when you’ve really fallen into your role as parents and are struggling to get used to sharing your time and attention normally devoted to a spouse and now split between a spouse and a child.  But I have to say for us, this year was one of my favorites (although I say that about every year).  

This year Shane was in school full time, took a pastoring job bi-vocationally, continued to work his full time job, and managed to be a rockstar dad and husband.  This year was filled with struggles around time management but also filled with God showing up and showing out in incredible ways. 

Year three was laughing at our baby when she learned to make cat sounds.  It was was trying to squeeze date nights in an overly crowded schedule.  It was taking a pay cut and watching God match every dollar through our new church.  It was learning how to parent, how to pastor, and how to love when you just plain don’t feel like it.  Year three was so much laughter and so much joy.  It was happy, but it was more than happy.  It was Dollywood trips, buying a new to us camper, and mastering the art of grilling steak and lobster.  And still it was redoing the budget again to be smarter with our money, rainy days on all of our camping trips, and broken trucks and campers.  It was a year of growing deeper in our love and learning to love through the really hard days and the really good days.  

Year three is the year we learned our own rhythm as a family.  We learned how to read when the other one just needs a break or an apology.  We learned how to fight fair (although sometimes we still mess up on this one).  We learned when to speak up and when to hush up.  We learned that we will never fully learn how to parent this crazy child the Lord gave us.  But, we learned who was stronger in what areas as a parent (surprising to most, Shane is the better one at discipline!).  We learned to never say “I will never let my child…” as we let our screaming one year old eat fruit loops off the floor while watching the same movie for the 4^th time in one day, while snuggling with a mop. 

This year I fell more in love with my smoking hot husband.  But, I also learned to love my selfless husband even deeper.  He is the hardest working person I know and he spoils me rotten!  He devotes 100% of himself to loving me, loving Hannah Kate, loving the guys he works with, loving his church, but most of all, loving Jesus.  He is the real deal, y’all.  We don’t go anywhere without him telling someone about Jesus and how HE changed his life.  And Jesus did change his life.  And I get to see it firsthand. What a blessed woman I am!