Flashback Friday - My Other Half

Being a single-parent for 3+ days this week really opened my eyes to a few things.  In no particular order, here they are:

1.  Single parents have one of the hardest jobs in the whole entire world.
2.  I do not handle stress well.
3.  "Me time" is critical for sanity's sake.
4.  Sam is invaluable to me as a partner.

I'm sure there were others, but for the purposes of this flashback, I want to concentrate on #4.   

Sam and I are rapidly approaching our seventh (!!!) wedding anniversary.  I cannot even put into words how my life has changed in the past seven years.  I went from being a carefree, teenaged college student, to a wife, to a mother, to a fulltime employee and consequently working mother.  We have been blessed in so very many ways, and now, we stand as an imperfect but amazing family of five.  (When I say imperfect, I'm mostly talking about myself.  But we *all* have our moments.)

Sam is the perfect complement to my crazy self.  While I'm impatient, he's got he patience of a saint.  While I prefer to do mindless, tedious tasks, he's the thinker and problem solver.  I can never relax, and he can fall asleep at the drop of a hat (even minutes before he's slated to do a presentation at a conference for a group of peers...true story!).  When I try to bulldoze the kids into doing something, he slyly tricks them into doing it.  He loves to cook and I like to clean up.  I create clutter and he gets rid of it.  He manages the finances and I manage school lunches, permission slips, snack calendars, and outfits.  I am unable to formulate plans, and he can make an agenda like no other.  Should I continue?

When we met, I knew we were soul mates.  We can chat or sit in silence.  It doesn't matter.  We can laugh together, fight together, and get over it together.  Sometimes life makes it harder to do this as expeditiously as we would want, but that's how life is. 

I think back to our wedding day, and despite the fact that I fail to say it as often as I should, I'm so grateful to have landed in this man's life.  And even if our wedding pictures look like a couple of kids playing dress up, it was beautiful and perfect, and I will treasure the memory of it forever.

 

 

To my wonderful husband, thank you.  For your eternal patience with imperfect me.