Seven Years and Four Babies.....

Yesterday was our anniversary. That's right, seven years ago Chris and I were saying our I dos and, in retrospect, I don't think we had any idea exactly what we were getting ourselves into--what idealistic newlyweds do?  The moves, the deployments, the babies, the losses--I could never have imagined the storms we would face or the graces we would receive to stand against them, or maybe more accurately to hold each other up through them.  Marriage transforms you into a better person--if you let it--and that transformation can be very painful.  It's not easy to put someone else's needs ahead of your own day in and day out.   It's not easy to love someone more than you love yourself--that takes real work--and much prayer.  Lucky for me I'm married to the most wonderful husband I could ever have imagined and oftentimes it feels like he's the one who's putting me first, putting our family first, and never (okay, rarely) complaining.  He takes care of us in that you know everything is going to be okay because he's there sort of way.  

And, no, we aren't fifteen in this picture.....I can see how you could be confused........

Yesterday was also Katharine's due date.  It was one of those crazy emotional days where you just aren't sure what you're feeling.  I was grateful for my husband and my marriage, grateful for this new little life within me, but also grieving for the life we lost, the little girl I barely had time to know but whom I'll always love.


Seven years and four babies.....I know I've been blessed beyond what I deserve.  I could go on and on about the beauty of marriage and babies but I could never put it as eloquently as Pope John Paul II so I'll just leave it to him:

"According to the plan of God, marriage is the foundation of the wider family, since the very institution of marriage and conjugal love are ordained to the procreation and education of children, in whom they find their crowning.

In its most profound reality, love is essentially a gift; and conjugal love, while leading the spouses  to the reciprocal knowledge which makes them one flesh, does not end with the couple, because it makes them capable of the greatest possible gift, the gift by which they become cooperators with God for giving life to a new human person.  Thus the couple, while giving themselves to one another, give not just themselves but also the reality of children who are a living reflection of their love, a permanent sign of conjugal unity and  a living and inseparable sythesis of their being a father and a mother.  

When they become parents, spouses receive from God the gift of a new responsibility.  Their parental love is  called to become for the children the visible sign of the very love of God, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named."

Familiaris Consortio

You should probably just go ahead and read the whole thing :)