Today we have been married for three years. It feels like forever, but at the same time like it was just a moment ago. Our life together has been anything but stable and the same since they day we started driving across the country to live in a province neither of us had ever even set foot in before (which was only two days after the wedding).
Since that day we have moved around a lot, changed jobs, got a new car, and still haven’t figured out what we are doing. A few weeks ago we were laying bed talking about how we don’t know where we are at yet or where we will be a year from now, yet alone in five or ten. Nigel was getting a little stressed thinking about it (which is usually my job) to which I replied “I didn’t say yes to marrying you knowing what we were doing with our life”.
Thinking back to when I first started dating Nigel I was still very much in the mindset that there was no way I was going to get married before I had graduated with my masters, but by the time that I had started to apply to grad school I knew that I didn’t want to be separated from Nigel and thus we started the process of our lives together.
We got engaged on March 13, 2016. I had applied to four different grad schools across Canada and gotten rejected from two of them already. I was feeling a little rejected and lost, but when I said yes I knew that no matter what I had someone that I could trust and it didn’t matter where I ended up. 10 days later on my 22nd birthday I got accepted to Western in London, Ontario and plans started to be set.
The next five months were a blur of wedding plan, graduating university, making plans to move across the country, and trying to find a place to live in Ontario. It was stressful, but fun time and it was our first experience in getting used to not getting attached to things or plans and in learning to trust each other.
Lots of things have changed in the three years since we said “I Do” and we have now been back in BC for over a year (which is the longest continual time we have lived in a place). We have made our basement suite our home, settled into jobs, and have created spaces and met people in the community that make us feel at home.
We don’t know how long this will last
Nigel and I have dreams for our future; we have a list of what we would love in a future home, we have talked about the names for our hopeful future children, and we have trips and travels we would love to go on. But we don’t know yet how or when these things will happen.
But that is okay. If the last three years have taught me anything is that things work out. When we don’t know where we are going to live, or where we are going to work, or walking into a church where we know no one, it has always worked out. We have created homes, found jobs, and made groups of friends that we can’t imagine life without.
The traditional third anniversary gift is leather and I feel like it is a important symbol of our relationship. Leather gets worn and beat up, but it is durable and it lasts. It has the ability to breathe and flex, but it can survive in harsh conditions. I feel like that is our relationship. The terrain may get rough, but our marriage can adapt, change, and last because we are in it for the long haul.
So three years in, we still may not know what we are doing, but we have a lot more trust that that is okay.
I love you Nigel.
fivestarredlife.ca 
Your post tells me one thing, you married the right person. In that, you both knew what you were doing… or at least Jesus did. 🙂 Keep on walking together.
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