I Wasn't Lucky to Fall in Love

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Taken by Studio 951

I love Carter more today than ever before, this is our fifteenth Valentine’s Day together and I still get excited to spend it with him. Our life together has been an adventure. We have traveled the world, had three children and are planning more, we laugh often, value one another, we have accomplished many of our dreams and have many more on the list! Life together is exciting.

People sometimes say how lucky we are to have such a great relationship. In one sense I understand that they are saying we are fortunate and blessed (which we are), but luck has nothing to do with the relationship that we have.

Carter asked me to be his girlfriend at fourteen, FOURTEEN!

We dated all through high school, we got serious and began to make choices to invest in our relationship. We missed out on a lot of things in high school because of our relationship. We got married at nineteen. I shouldn’t have to tell anyone that getting married at nineteen comes with a lot of sacrifices. I worked full time, so that Carter could finish his Accounting degree, which he did. Most days we were doing boring, married things while our friends were living it up at their universities. After graduating, Carter had a very stressful job which was a difficult time for us both.  Five years after we got married we started having children, which was wonderful, but also required us to work harder on keeping our relationship connected. Later, we decided it would be a good time for him to take his CPA, which meant me handling the home more on my own as he studied and took tests over several months.

For the majority of moments in our relationship we do feel love for one another. Most moments are peaceful and joyous, but we also have moments where we feel anger, heartbreak, disappointment, betrayal, annoyance, inadequacy, frustration or a hundred other feelings that don’t feel like love.

The problem with believing that love is a feeling is that you will think that love has left you when the feeling leaves you.

Love isn’t a feeling. Love is a choice.

The last fifteen years have been filled with both of us sacrificing for and investing in one another. Fifteen years… and you know what?  I see no end in sight. We will never come to a place that our relationship doesn’t take effort and focus. Ever.

Tomorrow if I wake up and decide to stop investing in us, there probably wouldn’t be an “us” by next Valentine’s Day.

We must get it out of our head that perfection is on the other side of marriage. Perfection is not on the other side of marriage, but investment is.

Finding love is great, but finding love doesn’t equal staying in love.

Long lasting love is not found.

it is learned

and it is chosen, over and over.

Carter and I have had a lot of great, easy and fun times in our life together, but when I look back at our journey, some of the most precious moments are the ones that weren’t the most enjoyable. I am most proud of the moments that we have looked into one another’s eyes and worked through a disagreement. I value the times that we have swallowed our pride and chosen to prioritize the other. I cherish the times we have discussed our greatest fears or our greatest regrets. I treasure the times that we have chose to listen, even when it hurts and we have forgiven, even when we didn’t want to.

Don’t believe the lie that you fall under the spell of love.

love isn’t a magical force, it is a deliberate choice.