Marrying Young

Its good for a marriage to think back to your first weeks/months of marriage...to remember where you've come from. But when you got married at 18 and 19, looking back fills you with a sense of gratitude that you survived. I'm not talking marriage survival....I'm talking actual survival......living to tell about it. I decided to blog about some of the funny stories of our first year starting with our honeymoon. Now in thinking about our honeymoon you must know that we were not old enough to rent a car so flying anywhere was not an option. However Blake's parents did graciously say that they would let us stay in their time-share condo in Cancun. When we asked if we were old enough to stay at the resort, their reply was, "Oh, we would go too." Oh yes! Fabulous idea. I could just imagine driving off from the wedding with our parents in the backseat or wait....would we be in the backseat. Needless to say we decided to stay within driving distance. After we left the wedding we had to go back to Blake's house (i.e.. his parents house) to switch cars because when your friends are between the ages of 16-20 they "decorate" your car until its illegal to drive down the road much less across several counties. But anyway we were sitting in the front seat of the second car and before driving off Blake leaned over to kiss me and *ahem* break one or two of our dating rules (I might add that I made a ridiculous amount of rules early on in our boyfriend/girlfriend relationship that we stuck to like glue until our wedding day. Like the freckle two inches above my knee that I told him God put there so he would know as far up as he was allowed to touch before he married me. Yep...two inches above the knee. "We" also decided we would only kiss once a month but I was afraid we might have an accidental kiss on occasion so I'd only let him kiss me once every two months just in case..... Yes, I am afraid to say this is all very true..... And yes, I will be tattooing a freckle on Hope's leg around the age of 12.) But anyway...back to breaking a couple of rules in his driveway...... suddenly I gasped, he turned around and there was his uncle's very perky 40 something girlfriend waving enthusiastically and smiling hugely with her face smashed up to the window holding a big plate of wedding cake. Blake sheepishly rolled down the window and before he could open his mouth what's her name (can't remember because she and Blake's uncle broke up right after that and I haven't seen her since.) began to gush about how there was so much wedding cake left and she decided to hurry some over to us before we left. What an angel!!!! We decided to leave the driveway after quickly accepting our cake!

So our first stop on our honeymoon was a condo at Sam Rayburn with mirror ceilings in the bedroom. Oh yes, you read it right. Mirror ceilings. The bedroom was on the bottom floor and the stairs were in the bedroom that lead up to the top floor. On the second night, we kept hearing noises upstairs. I was scared! Finally Blake got up, grabbed his pocket knife and began to creep upstairs. Watching my man/boy husband headed off to protect me, I just remember thinking that I really wanted my Daddy. Our second part of our honeymoon was a bed and breakfast in Hot Springs. Upon arrival, I decided I didn't like the smell and cried my eyes out telling Blake that I did not want to stay and would he PLEASE go ask the lady if we could have our money back so that we could leave. He did exactly that, bless his dear heart and then had to come back and tell me that no we couldn't have our money back but that he did have a plan. Hiccuping and sniffing I asked him what his plan was. He said, "I'm going to hold you while you take a nap and when you wake up you tell me what you want to do. If you want to leave, we'll leave right then and not worry one bit about the money. I tearfully agreed and fell asleep in his arms while he watched Cool Runnings on TV. I woke up two hours later much happier and from that moment on, I can't remember ever feeling like I really wished I was with my Daddy instead. He was my new hero. (Daddy, if you read this you will always be my hero too!)

Well, we finished our honeymoon and a few days later we were headed back home for Christmas. The first night we stayed in his bedroom at his parents. We knew it would be weird but it was Christmas Eve and we wanted it to be romantic so we lit candles. Several minutes into our "first Christmas Eve...with candles" there's a knock at the door and his mom says she needs to come in to get the pies out of the the fridge. You have to go through Blake's room to get to the laundry room where they keep an extra fridge. Upon entering, she decides to turn and talk to us about the dangers of sleeping with candles lit, and how breathing in the fumes for a long period of time could be fatal. I have no idea how Blake responded. I was too busy with my head buried in his back thinking that I was going to die of embarrassment.

Back home at CFNI, we managed to somehow adjust to not living in single dorms anymore. HA HA HA HA HA. There were several times we would sit down for the 11:00 service and then after discussing it between ourselves announce to our friends that we were going to clock out and go home to take a nap instead of staying through the service, to which our single friends would holler out as we exited the IB, "We hate you, do you know that, we hate you!" Yeah, that was fun.....again proof of our age.....but fun still the same. Ok. One more story. The next Christmas right around our one year anniversary we decided to get a Christmas tree for our apartment. I had to have a real tree so we went to WalMart to find a tree small enough to fit in the trunk of our Kia Sephia. We found the perfect one and got it out to the car and NO WAY would that thing fit in our trunk. But lo and behold my manly husband had brought a rope to tie it to the roof. After some deep thinking he said, "Roll down all the windows." So we went around to all 4 windows and rolled them down. (They were manual of course.) Then my amazing husband started tying that tree to that car like you wouldn't believe. Through one window and over the top, through the next and over the top, on and on until he had that thing so secure it would not be going anywhere! And I thought he was so hot! Then we went to jump in but.....we could not open our doors. What the heck......OHHHH..........the doors are tied shut with the rope. I thought it was hilarious and began to laugh but poor Blake, his ego was shot. We eventually did get that tree home and I'm pretty sure I helped him repair his ego as well.

I could probably think of many other stories. I might have to do a part two sometime but for now I'll just say that we survived. God gave us wisdom when we needed it, lots of grace for ourselves and each other, an amazing love that continues to grow stronger and to this day we still have moments we know that .....eventually "we'll look back on and laugh."