Forever and ever, Amen.

As I drove home from work this morning, this song came on

Forever and ever -Randy Travis

and as I sang along I reflected on how strong love is, in its many forms.

    Chris and I are pretty individualistic, especially me, we love spending time together

but we are far from inseparable, and yet we both make sacrifices to make the other one's day a little brighter.

It also makes you do things you normally wouldn't. Our first year of marriage was rockier than a Sylvester Stallone movie, love made us do things we normally wouldn't, but not for the better. When you allow someone into your life, and to know every part of who you are, some of the ugly comes out. We'd fight over the STUPIDEST stuff, for instance, we got in a fight once over where to park the car, a shouting match over it. 

If it were anyone else, we wouldn't care where they parked. Love also makes you do the right thing, our marriage got so hard that we would purposefully not see each other, he'd stay out late (be it with friends, or his family) and come home after I'd gone to bed, and I'd wake up early, get dressed and leave right away. It was the only way we wouldn't fight...except we found it hard to stay completely away, because we'd text-fight a lot during that time. this continued for a whole month!

In late February, we reconvened and worked ourselves out. Its a conscious decision, day by day, to show love and not go down the slippery slope into unpleasant land. I say that this year should count our first year of our marriage, because the first year was a nightmare and wasn't who we were. This year has had some hiccups, like all relationships (even friendships!) have, but it pales in comparison to before. 

I never thought I'd be grateful for 'normal' fights that end with just being annoyed, not a shouting match to the death. 

Honestly though, when I first reflected on this song, I thought about how God loves us so much,

which is funny because I wrote about my marriage first, when I hadn't even compared it to my marriage until now. I thought about how God is our first love, in many cases. I know he was my first love, I was thinking about all the way God shows his love for us everyday. Obviously his greatest display of love was his great sacrifice of himself so we could live with him forever, but specifically today I was thinking of how much he loves each of us, personally.  He is such a romantic, he shows us things that he knows make us smile, like pretty flowers, blue skies, sparkly frost on the pavement. He's the epitome of strength and the ultimate warrior, he is bigger than the galaxy and more intelligent than a thousand super computers, yet somehow he is our best friend, our ever present help, our listening ear. To think that someone so powerful loves every fiber of your being, not just your personality, but EVERYTHING about you is still beyond me.
 I could hear him saying this morning after I shut my car off to go inside, "I love you, forever and ever, amen". What could be a better feeling than that? Totally what I needed to hear too.