Thankful Series: Day Fourteen (+#Giveaway News!)
All this month I will be watching on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and my new subscribers for my monthly-0r-so newsletter. If you tag me @JulieArduini and tell me you’re #thankful or #juliearduinithankful, I’ll enter your name to win a copy of my fiction books. This includes Entrusted, Entangled, Engaged, You’re Beautiful and the boxed set of A Christmas to Remember (only available as eBook.)
If you live in the United States, you have the choice, if you are the one winner randomly chosen, of print (except A Christmas to Remember,) or eBook. If you are outside of the US, it is automatically eBook.
I’ll add your name once a day for each shout out I receive (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, plus one total entry if you are a new subscriber to my newsletter.) You may or may not receive confirmation from me for those entries, and my random draw is final. If winner doesn’t respond after 30 days, I will choose another. I’m thankful for you.
I feel bad that it took 13 days to talk about marriage. I’m truly blogging these as I feel I’m supposed to, so here we are. I talked about my hair before my husband.
I’m thankful we’re still together. That seems like a no-brainer, but when I think about our wedding video, I have trouble watching it. There are so many couples at our wedding who are divorced. It hurts my heart. There are couples I lost track of when we moved to Ohio. When I ask how they are doing, I learn they are no longer together. I remember once asking about a marriage and I was told they divorced, they just fell out of love.
Can I be real? I think in 22 years, I’ve fallen out of love like fifty times. There are times I grieve the excitement we had when things first clicked. We were an hour or more away from each other and he called every day. We couldn’t wait to see each other, and we dressed our best when we knew our reunion was coming.
Fast forward to over two decades of marriage and we’ve both apologized for being so busy we forget to text each other. Because he loves sports and old movies more than I do, he has a room to watch TV where I seldom visit. We’re a far cry from those lovebirds circa 1995.
But I am thankful. Through the years, prayers, trials, tears, laughs, and blessings we have become a solid couple that can withstand some pretty tough storms. We are apart more than we are together. It is how it is. It’s his work, and my schedule, and our parenting and everything in between. When we catch up, I can’t wait. We still want to tell the other first when we have great news. We have “our places” that we love to steal away to, even if to anyone else it’s a little diner in a small town or a cheap movie theater where our feet stick to the floor.
What we have isn’t for everyone and it is hard. But, it’s also good. I believe the best is yet to come, and I love that because what we’ve experienced has been good. And when I look around and see so much carnage when it comes to the family unit, I don’t take a second for grated that we remain intact.
