15 yrs later my eyes are open, but my choice is still the same

So blissfully unaware these two are. So happy and so excited and so clueless to everything the next fifteen years would bring. They happily and easily said their vows, to love, to serve, to treasure till death would they part. It was so easy to say those vows. The wedding really is the easy part of marriage. It's exciting it's fun, it's a fantasy world. Real marriage is in the day to day. The ignoring the piles of laundry and dishes, the doing those piles of laundry and dishes. The sitting at the hospital bedside and running to fill the prescriptions. The battling through the disagreements and letting go of the hurts and wrong doings. That is what marriage is. I've said it before, but each anniversary as I look at these pictures, I realize again, It's not the party, it's not the dress, it's not the favors.

Marriage is living out the vows and promises daily, yearly and choosing to keep them sacred. It's saying, I would choose you all over again, knowing what I know now about who we both are and what we have become.

Gone are the days of constant love notes, and little gifts, song after song and email after email about how much we love one another. Acts of love today are more about doing the dishes and having fun with the kids than serenading me with a song from stage. It's about the partner and dad he is, not how hot or entertaining (although he is both of those things). Back when that photo was taken, it was all about how quickly we could get to that hotel room and get our hands on each other.  These days we are lucky to get an hour together at the end of the day to sit next to each other and watch Grimm before one of us falls asleep. We have grocery dates now, romantic right?  We don't go to the beach for a whole weekend anymore on our anniversary and that trip to vegas to renew our vows, never going to happen. Big ceremonies aren't the important parts of marriage, it's about big commitments, big sacrifices and lots and lots of little things. Little things like picking up those prescriptions, walking dogs and picking up the kids. Knowing how to stack the dishes next to the sink, although I still haven't figured that one out. Now it's about a text on a busy day to let him know I am thinking about him, or making sure the kids have everything laid out before I leave for a weekend at work. It's about him ignoring my stressed out snaps and not taking them personally and vice versa.  It's about enjoying grocery errands, because we are together, and even grocery errands can be fun with the right partner. It's thinking the same thing at the same time over and over again, because we know each other and enjoy so many of the same moments and parts of life. It's about being comfortable, vulnerable and loved so completely by another person even when they know how truly awful you are.   I don't mean to say that marriage isn't great, and that it is absent of romance and awesomeness. Those old habits and grand gestures still happen sometimes, but now there is so much more to appreciate and enjoy, so many more ways to understand that we love each other. It's a new kind of awesome this everyday marriage.

We are aware now, our eyes are open, at least to some things. We chose each other today, and hopefully for thousands of more days. We will fight, we will disappoint each other, but we will also be there. We will have moments of great joy, and lots of fun. We will also have moments of crisis and sorrow.  We will support one another, and we will start dreaming new dreams, blissfully unaware of the troubles the next fifteen years might bring. We choose each other, really knowing things won't always be blissful, but we will choose both the bliss and the beauty, the awful and the ugly together.