We’re celebrating 9 years of marriage today! It’s been a crazy but beautiful ride.

The longer we’re married, the more I realize that there is no way to adequately prepare for marriage. You just have to learn as you live it!

I read a lot. So before we were married, I read all kinds of books on marriage and sex and love. I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. Honestly, I did. I knew marriage would have its ups and downs but I really thought we would be fine! (And we are fine, but whew, it took awhile!)

We even did plenty of marriage prep stuff – met with our priest a few times, took the FOCCUS inventory, and met with a mentor couple several times. Our priest had zero concerns, our inventory results showed zero concerns, and our lovely mentor couple actually told us that we would be teaching marriage prep one day.

It’s all so funny now, really. Looking back, it really did seem like we knew what we were getting into. But man, life really hit us – communication problems, pregnancy loss, infertility, sex problems, high-risk pregnancy, finances, difficult family relationships, you name it. How the heck were we supposed to be prepared for all of THAT?

I was recently thinking about the vows we said at our wedding and couldn’t help but laugh, because we could have added a few things to it.

I, Jen, take you, Logan, to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

I promise to be faithful to you even though a vocation to the religious life looks pretty appealing sometimes.

To love you and honor you when our bank account is pitifully low because everything in our house is breaking.

I, Logan, take you, Jen, to be my wife. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

I promise to be faithful to you even when we can’t have sex during your 9-month pregnancy because of your stupid cervix.

To love you and to honor you even when one of our kids is puking at midnight.

The ironic thing, though, is that I think Logan and I love each other more because of everything we’ve gone through.

Those years of desperately wanting a baby made me appreciate how great of a dad Logan is now.

Those long pregnancies of abstinence showed me that Logan loves me enough to wait for me. (And yes, guys, totally possible to abstain! Hard, definitely, but possible.)

Those nights of cleaning up puke together really cemented in my mind the fact that Logan and I make a pretty awesome team.

So yeah, marriage hasn’t been what we expected it to be. It’s been a heck of a lot harder, but now we know that anything worth doing is going to be hard. And we’ve been able to look back on our 9 years of marriage thus far and see the fruit from all of those trials.

God can use anything, redeem anything, and He wants to do incredible things in your marriage.

“There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.” -Rev. Jean-Pierre de Caussade