My husband and I decided celebrate our first anniversary a month early because we begin ministry at Wolf Mountain on the 23rd which happens to be the day that we got married last May!
First of all, many days of the year can feel like an anniversary celebration! You don’t need to do anything big or magical, because spending quality time with your spouse is basically a celebration.
Second of all, our laid-back, but meaningful celebration made me think how interesting it is that society has blown up all the things that don’t really matter about a relationship….
the engagement ring
the story behind your engagement
the wedding invitations
the wedding dress….my goodness…the dress.
the perfect wedding day, hello!
the first anniversary (not the anniversary…the cruise you went on, you know?).
And I’m not saying those things aren’t important, fun, or something to look forward to…..
But I think that in our scramble to have pretty social media feeds or noteworthy lives, we’ve obsessed over all this extra stuff that doesn’t really matter. Not in the long-run, anyway.
My relationship with my husband matters not because I have a beautiful ring, or because I walked down the aisle in a white dress, but because I have committed to Ben before God, and this commitment is lasting a lifetime.
It’s beautiful, wonderful, hard and worth it. Also, it’s so, so fun!
All that to say, we decided to have an early celebration. It was small, quiet, and lovely. We drove up to Wolf Mountain and oohed and ahhed over our new home that is almost ready to live in!
It was fun to talk about the past and dream about the future. It was an adventure to camp out in our new bedroom in sleeping bags. It was lovely waking up to the beautiful view from our windows. It was relaxing to organize some of the stuff we have already moved up there.
Honestly, it was priceless to have those short hours of just us–-no interruptions.
I believe that you don’t need an impressive trip, a whole magical weekend, or this perfect lovey dovey feeling to wash over you. You just need to stop and look around at your life together and be grateful for all that surrounds you.
On May 23rd, our real anniversary will pop up. And you better believe that we will be celebrating again, but it will look different than you might expect. Why? Because our busy first day of ministry at Wolf Mountain will become our anniversary celebration.
And that will be enough.
It will be another new beginning that we can share together. This time, it won’t be our wedding day, but the beginning of this life ministry as husband and wife.
That is so exciting!
Celebrating doesn’t need a perfect photo on Facebook or a lovely Instagram post. Celebrating doesn’t require a weekend getaway or a perfect surprise. Celebrating doesn’t require any kind of perfection. And while those things are lovely to do, it’s a shame that we have elevated them so high.
Don’t celebrate to impress people. Don’t celebrate in order to live up to something great and big. Don’t celebrate because it’s the expected thing to do.
Celebrate because you are building your home, living everyday life, learning forgiveness, embracing change, and choosing each other over and over again.
And you know what? It was perfect to celebrate right where we were, with what we had, in the life we share together.
Previous Posts:
Sierra V. Fedorko 
[…] Follow Down Cottonwood Lane on WordPress.com (function(d){var f = d.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0], p = d.createElement('SCRIPT');p.type = 'text/javascript';p.async = true;p.src = '//widgets.wp.com/platform.js';f.parentNode.insertBefore(p,f);}(document)); […]
LikeLike
[…] Reflections Concerning Marriage […]
LikeLike
[…] First Anniversary Reflections […]
LikeLike