On Friday Jamie and I celebrated our 10th anniversary.
We took a weekend trip a few weeks ago to mark the occasion a little early so Friday evening was a rather modest recognition of this significant milestone in our lives.
I grilled a couple of steaks I picked up on the way home from work, and we enjoyed a little time alone together after we finally got the kids to bed. Both of us wondered how in the world 10 years went by so quickly.
It may have been a simple celebration – but make no mistake – we were definitely celebrating.
True love is something worth commemorating, and that’s what we have been blessed with.
Too many marriages don’t seem to last these days, but ours has grown stronger over the years. In a decade of marriage we’ve never had a serious disagreement about anything. That’s almost hard to believe considering that we also work together.
One of our secrets to success has been that both of us are focused on the things that really matter in life, and we don’t let ourselves get overly concerned with things that don’t fit in that category.
Money seems to be what many couples fight about, and although we’ve certainly had plenty of concerns at times about how we were going to be able to pay the bills, we’ve never once gotten angry with each other about money.
It probably helps that both of us have plenty of experience being broke. We’ve fortunately been able to improve our status somewhat through hard work and God’s blessings, but we don’t let it get the best of us when unexpected challenges arise.
When times get hard, we stick together.
We also don’t let ourselves obsess about material things. There was a time early in our relationship when I frequently bought Jamie jewelry for special occasions. Now that we have three children, those kind of purchases are usually out of reach.
On Valentine’s Day this year, I didn’t have enough money to buy her an expensive gift so I took every free moment I had writing a song for her. I sang it to her while I played it on guitar, and even though it was probably terrible, I think she appreciated that more than anything I could have bought in a store.
One other thing that I think has been a key to our success is that we can completely trust each other. Jamie and I spend almost all of our time together so naturally we sometimes need some time apart. If she wants to hang out with her girlfriends or spend a day shopping by herself, that’s always fine with me. She feels the same way when I need a few hours of solitude working on the land or going somewhere with my brother or one of my close friends.
It probably helps that neither of us overdo it because we usually would rather be with each other than anywhere else. Jamie is also my best friend.
There was a time in my life when I wondered if I’d ever get married. I was pushing 30, and many of my friends were married while the thought had never even crossed my mind. My father died in 2015, and during the last year of his life, we had a lot of serious conversations that we might not have had if we didn’t realize that our time together was limited.
During one of those conversations, I told him that I wondered if something was wrong with me because I had never met a girl that I thought about marrying.
“I know you Jason, and when you meet that girl, you are going to be smart enough to hang on to her,” was his reply.
He was right.
I met her that same year, and I’ve been hanging on ever since.
Jamie is everything I could ever want in a wife.
She is beautiful. She has her own style and has never cared what anyone else thinks. We share a love of music, books and movies. Both of us have favorites that we’ve been able to share with each other.
She celebrates my victories with me and reminds me that my failures don’t define me. She laughs at my jokes and always seems to be able to make me laugh when I’m down. I think that my ability to make her laugh was what attracted her to me in the first place.
She’s a wonderful mother, and she somehow manages to keep our house in order despite the long hours she works every week. Speaking of work, we are both writers, and sometimes when I’m reading her work I think to myself “I wish that I could have written it like that.” I’m constantly striving to improve myself to try to reach the standards that she sets.
Ten years ago on June 16, I married the girl of my dreams. I still haven’t woken up, and I don’t ever plan to.
