Renewal

This June 12th, Chris and I will have been married for seven years. After three years of dating, this also means that date will mark ten years of being together.

The last seven years has not been easy. Though we love each other fiercely, over the years we have both struggled to truly live out what it means to be married. Before I met Chris, I was fairly certain that I'd never get married. I loved my independence too much and envisioned my adult life rootless-- never calling someplace home, always casting aside cities and friends and jobs in search for the next city, friends, and jobs. But shortly after Chris and I started dating, I stood in the rain with him, wrapped in his arms, wishing and wishing that he didn't have to go back to college (he was in college in Georgia, whereas I was in school in Illinois). In his arms, for the first time, I felt like I was home. We clung to each other, and it was just like every little girl is told. In that moment, I just knew. I knew he was the one I was going to marry.

In a way, I wish our love could have remained as effortless and as simple as that. I wish it would have been easy for us. It wasn't. We were reckless with the gift of marriage, we took each other for granted, and for six years we stood on the precipice of divorce. We lived apart for a while. At times we both told our families that we were done with each other. We lived like roommates for a while, and we lived like adversaries for a while, too.

[Photo by Vignette Photography]

At the end of 2009, we started being a part of a really great church and while we were there we got to know some amazing people who openly shared their own stories of struggles in marriage. This was such a relief and a blessing to us. As Christians, we were ashamed that our marriage was in shambles and truly felt alone in our battle. That's when healing began.

It has not been smooth sailing since then. To truly be able to heal, a lot of hurtful confessions happened between us and there were more times when I contemplated cutting my losses and walking out, but as I prayed for the strength to do so, I was given the strength to stick it out, instead. I found a lot of despair and darkness every time I threw in the towel, but every time I offered grace and received grace, I felt hope and got glimpses of what a marriage could be.

In the midst of being pregnant and having a well known, local fashion blog, this is what Chris and I were dealing with, privately. It's been more than a year since we have really been working on setting a new, healthy foundation for our marriage. I can truly say that it is only by the grace of God that our marriage has been redeemed.

In the next few months, you're going to see a lot of chatter on Adored Austin about us renewing our vows this June. Yes, I had a less than ideal wedding day (mainly due to me spraying hydrogen peroxide in my eye the morning of!), but please don't think that's why we're doing it. We are doing it to make a public acknowledgment of our changed lives and we are redeeming our wedding day to reclaim it as a day of grace. We want to celebrate the fact that God is still performing miracles, and our marriage becoming a better picture of God's perfect love for us is proof of that. Chris and I would both say that our marriage looks really different now, but I'm happy to say that his arms still feel like home to me.