On this day, 6 years ago, we became husband and wife.

We dated 6 years before saying ‘i do’. We fought for our long distance relationship, and won. You survived law school. I survived my grad program. We survived the longest engagement ever known to man.  We battled horrible rains and flooding and the grief of losing my Nana in the days leading up to our big day. I wore my rain boots. I did my own hair {I’m cheap}. I did my own flowers {I’m cheap}.  I threw out the last half of my wedding ‘to do’ list and deemed things “Good Enough”. We were gifted a gorgeously sunny day. Our family and friends surrounded us with so much love. It was absolutely perfect.
Except…..
My vows to you were HORRENDOUS.
We opted to write our own vows. Which is an idea that I actually still support, even though mine were less than stellar. And you totally ‘wowed’ me by singing your vows to me. {swoon}
But mine were {pardon my harsh language} total crap.
I worked on them and revised and revisited them often, throwing out so many drafts, but when it came time to read them I remember looking at the paper and the words I’d written in love and absolutely hating them. If you asked me now what I had written on the paper I couldn’t tell you. I’m sure they were nice words, but I just couldn’t make myself say them. I suddenly didn’t like a single bit of them. So I went rogue.  I just said words as they came to my mind {super classy, as always} and we all know I don’t do well with ‘off the cuff’ stuff. I think I may have included an “I love you” and a {cringe} “you always make me laugh” {what is this? an end of the year yearbook signing?}. That actually may have been it. No promises to honor and obey and be a good Jesus loving wife. I think I even ended it with “Ok, I’m done”. {face, meet palm}. I bet I threw our pastor for a loop.
I basically made ZERO promises to you. But you know what? If I could rewind time and do it all over again I don’t think I would go crazy with the promises. I think, for newlyweds, the best you can do is be honest and keep it simple:

I promise to love you and love Jesus

and fight for our marriage no matter what we face.

The end.

Now, after 6 years, I have a little better idea of the vows I want to make to you. I almost wish we’d given new vows to each other on our anniversary each year. Maybe we can start that tradition from now on? It will force us to reflect on our marriage, to pick it apart a bit and look at what’s good as well as what needs some more work. We are always changing and always growing, so as a byproduct, our marriage is changing and growing as well. Our old vows just don’t fit anymore. We’ve outgrown them.
Here are my new vows to you:

Chris, I promise to love you and keep working towards loving you.
I promise to love Jesus and keep working towards loving Jesus.
I promise to be honest with you…  in all areas of our life. No hiding things, no secrets, no lies.
I promise to make ‘you before me’ my anthem { out of obedience to God, and also because I know you’re doing the same for me}.
I promise to focus on your good, because you are good, and dwelling on the not-so-good parts of either of us is inviting discontent to come between us.  Discontentment is not invited.
I promise to assume the best. Like you told me early on in our marriage “If there are 2 ways to take a comment/action, assume the better meaning/better reason/better motivation behind it, rather than assuming the worst/the negative/the purposefully hurtful”.
I promise to not bristle when you use the words ‘overly sensitive’. I promise to take an introspective look to discover if I may, in fact, be responding in a sensitive way.  I will discover that I am, in fact, overly sensitive. You will be ok with me being sensitive. You will give me a hug and kind words.
I promise to run to you and not away from you when I am upset with you. I will let you get in my space with a bear hug to diffuse my temper, because we know that time and space when I’m angry or upset actually makes things worse. ‘Hug it out’ has legit healing powers.
I promise to make decisions with you. Big decisions, little decisions. We are #TeamBaker and we will tackle things together.
I promise to obey. That word doesn’t scare me. I am so comforted by the leader God has gifted me with, one who seeks God’s best for us. Lead on; I will trust and follow.
The end.

Thank you for loving me and for putting work into our marriage.
I feel honored and cherished and loved by you and I will work to make sure those feelings are gifted back to you times ten.
Happy six years to us.

Caption for the photo above: Me, trying to think of words. Mitch, our pastor, wondering what happened to my brain.

Side note: Kazoos at a wedding are SO fun. You can’t not smile when kazoo-ing. I still get the giggles when I think about this moment!