What Love Looks Like, 15 Years Later
At Jackson Falls on the Natchez Trace, one of our happy places
If you count the March birthday he had after we first met, but before we started dating, and before I knew that the Asian guy with the million dollar smile and magnetic personality was going to be my husband, this is the 16th birthday we’ve celebrated of his.
Steven Bailey doesn’t buy me bouquets of flowers. Instead, he buys me a trellising rose plant, so I can have flowers every single spring.
That pretty sums up how Steven Bailey loves me.
On his birthday, I thought I’d stop and remember all the day-in-and-day-out details about our lives together that continue to make it work.
Ann Voskamp said once, "Marriage and love and time, these are the enormous forces that inevitably chisel and change us into strangers. The springs sag. Mattresses sigh. Marriage changes us into strangers who have to meet again and introduce each other to love.
They didn’t tell us that at the beginning: The moment you let love into your heart, your heart starts breaking. The only way to stop your heart from breaking is to stop your heart from loving. You always get to choose: either a hard heart or a broken heart. A broken heart is always the abundant heart — all those many beautiful pieces only evidence of an abundant life."
Goodness, we’ve lived some broken seasons together, but we’ve never completely fell apart. We’ve always been held together by those threads we built strong in the beginning, when we first became close friends who truly enjoyed being together.
When I look back at all the hard things we’ve been through - family problems, friendship problems, financial problems, business problems - I now see abundance where, for all intents and purposes, we should have nothing. Because God has been with us through the hard. He restores and redeems. That’s just what He does.
Almost 15 years married and two children, a big move, and the craziness of launching multiple businesses will force you to change and grow together…or not. Every day we realize we have the choice to stay a team, respecting and celebrating our differences within the team. Or, we can go to opposite sides, hold our ground, and grow apart.
We choose team. We choose family. We choose together.
This isn’t an idyllic, perfect marriage. Rather, it’s the story of a marriage that’s been hard-won through prayer, lots of struggle, trial-and-error, and very wise advice from those further down the path.
15 years in, our love looks like….
Prioritizing time with our guy/girl friends, separately, because we know that being healthier versions of ourselves helps keep our marriage healthy.
Bursting out laughing to the point of not being able to breathe while making Friends jokes and moving a huge-a** shelving unit from behind the barn.
A pep talk in the bedroom when I’m choking out through tears, “I’m scared. I don’t feel brave.” And he listens with compassion, but he doesn’t try to fix it. He writes me a letter that says, “You are truly brave. You are truly strong. You will rise above. You will grow. I love you.”
Saying yes to the double-dip ice cream cone, or drinking wine and eating pizza in the back of the pickup truck because “it’s all about the memories.”
Cooking together in the barn kitchen while listening to 80s anthems like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston, and listening to him say every single time, “Oh man, I LOVE this song…”
Not waiting for the perfect opportunity to have “a real date” and getting in whatever time together we can. Sometimes that’s sitting on the porch drinking Topo Chico for 10 minutes while our girls play in the creek. Or holding hands on the walk to the greenhouse to close it up on a 30-degree winter night. Or teaching our 9-year-old how to make coffee in the french press so she can deliver it to us in bed on a Sunday morning - ha!
All I know is that this “true love” thing is a choice.
And today, I’m celebrating you, Steven. It’s still you, and it always will be.
What a gift that, through all we’ve been through, I still get chills when you put your hand on my lower back. And I can still say you’re truly my best friend in the entire world.
