Thorns or Flowers

As promised, here is a picture of our little one!  Isn't she cute? ;)

Not only did we get to celebrate knowing who our little one is, we also got to celebrate being married for our first year!  Wow time flies!  

One of my counsellors has been married for 21 years and she made an interesting comment that made me think.  Right now, most of us are dreaming of our future.  Where will we be?  What will our children be like?  What will we be doing?  What have we accomplished?  She and her husband were married here (Gold Coast) and then moved to the Cook Islands to where she was from.  They only recently moved back and she finds it interesting to be living in her "future."  Once we get to our future, will we be excited that we're there?  Will we have gone through life loving every minute, or always dreaming of the next step?  It is so easy to think, "Once we have a bigger place, we'll be happy."  "Once we have the perfect jobs, we'll be happy."  My guess is that happiness will continue to elude us until we figure out how to enjoy the little things around us.  I'm not going to lie and say that I enjoy my challenges in life, but I can at least hope that I've learned something that will make my life richer and deeper.  I also hope I learned enough that I won't have those particular challenges again!  

So, after a year of marriage, is it all I ever imagined?  No.  Was it as hard as I thought it would be?  Harder.  Have I enjoyed every minute of it?  No.  Who ever made marriage out to be a 'Happily Ever After' *cough Disney cough* must have been living in their own fairytale.  However, along this trail surrounded by thorns are the flowers that can be simply overlooked by all the scratches and dreariness, or they can be focused on to see the happiness surrounding us.  Flowers like spending an afternoon running in and out of the waves to collect rocks while trying (failing) to keep our pants from getting wet.  Coming home from an evening of meetings to find the dishes done and the house cleaned up.  Curling up together under a blanket to get warm and falling asleep.  Phone calls asking if it's okay to buy me something.  Almost giddy excitement whenever dinner happens to be meatloaf (I make one killer meatloaf).  Being told it's a girl (notice the flower on her head?).  No matter what we do, life will continue to be its trail through thorns with scratches here and there, but the great part of marriage is that now there is someone else to help point out the flowers if we might have missed one along the way.  Some day I hope it will be like a rose bush, where the thorns are forgotten, or at least completely disregarded, and the flowers be the complete focus.  Maybe that's why roses are such a symbol of love.  There are always the thorny parts, but the beauty makes it all worth it!

And for my very own reminder.......

 

Thank you, Love.  It has been a great year through it all.  Looking forward to a life full of roses!