Marriage and Multiples: Letters from Dad Edition - #13

(Once a month, I invite Sean to take over the blog and write a little note to our kids. I love that he is willing to leave little nuggets of wisdom for them to look back on when they are older!

Today's post actually fits two categories quite well! It's part of our usual "Letters from Dad" series, but is also a great article in our "Marriage and Multiples" series. Make sure you check out both series when you get a chance!)

Dear Children,

This month, Mommy and I celebrated six years of marriage. For those with mad math skills, we have been married twice as long as you have been alive. The time has flown by.  It’s flown by in a really good way. I can hardly believe that six years have gone by.

On the night we celebrated our anniversary, I started to think about how difficult marriage is. And by that, I don’t mean there is a lot of screaming and fighting. I mean there is a lot of life that is lived. The summer before you children were born, I had a friend that was murdered, our basement flooded, and so did the church basement that I was a deacon at. In hindsight, the flooded basements seem so trivial but during that summer they seemed to be a big deal. We had so many other things go wrong that summer, and we were completely overwhelmed. The next year we had four premature babies (that’s you kids just in case you were wondering if we had another set of quadruplets that we never told you about.) Spending what was essentially four months at the hospital definitely puts your life into perspective. We heard a lot of sad stories while we were there.

Your mommy and I have made it so far. Our goal in life is not to lose sight of each other. Marriages that get rocky do so because of a number of things, but one of them are because the individuals get wrapped in their own lives and forget about each other. It’s easy to get self-absorbed and selfish. It’s not easy to put someone else before your own needs.

Mommy is always asking me why I chose to marry her. I chose for a variety of reasons. She is giving. She gives herself to others and genuinely cares about others’ hurts and wants to help them overcome them. She is brave, way braver than I have ever been. If you don’t believe me go back and read her blog posts. She challenges me. As you know I am very arrogant, and Mommy calls me out on it, but the biggest way she challenges me is that she is very intelligent. Probably one of the smartest people I know, regardless of how much of a hard time I give her. The truth is, children, Mommy is better than me in all the ways that count. She teaches me how to love, and I hope you learn that from her. Love looks differently for each person. I demonstrate it differently than Mommy and you kids will also have your own love languages, but we are family and we need to not give up on each other.

I hope, children, that you one day can have a marriage like Mommy and me. I hope that you challenge one another and love each other madly and deeply. Please, please don’t ever lose sight of your spouse, and work towards giving them what they think they need.

Love,

Daddy

(Once a month, I invite Sean to take over the blog and write a little note to our kids. I love that he is willing to leave little nuggets of wisdom for them to look back on when they are older!

Today's post actually fits two categories quite well! It's part of our usual "Letters from Dad" series, but is also a great article in our "Marriage and Multiples" series. Make sure you check out both series when you get a chance!)

Dear Children,

This month, Mommy and I celebrated six years of marriage. For those with mad math skills, we have been married twice as long as you have been alive. The time has flown by.  It’s flown by in a really good way. I can hardly believe that six years have gone by.

On the night we celebrated our anniversary, I started to think about how difficult marriage is. And by that, I don’t mean there is a lot of screaming and fighting. I mean there is a lot of life that is lived. The summer before you children were born, I had a friend that was murdered, our basement flooded, and so did the church basement that I was a deacon at. In hindsight, the flooded basements seem so trivial but during that summer they seemed to be a big deal. We had so many other things go wrong that summer, and we were completely overwhelmed. The next year we had four premature babies (that’s you kids just in case you were wondering if we had another set of quadruplets that we never told you about.) Spending what was essentially four months at the hospital definitely puts your life into perspective. We heard a lot of sad stories while we were there.

Your mommy and I have made it so far. Our goal in life is not to lose sight of each other. Marriages that get rocky do so because of a number of things, but one of them are because the individuals get wrapped in their own lives and forget about each other. It’s easy to get self-absorbed and selfish. It’s not easy to put someone else before your own needs.

Mommy is always asking me why I chose to marry her. I chose for a variety of reasons. She is giving. She gives herself to others and genuinely cares about others’ hurts and wants to help them overcome them. She is brave, way braver than I have ever been. If you don’t believe me go back and read her blog posts. She challenges me. As you know I am very arrogant, and Mommy calls me out on it, but the biggest way she challenges me is that she is very intelligent. Probably one of the smartest people I know, regardless of how much of a hard time I give her. The truth is, children, Mommy is better than me in all the ways that count. She teaches me how to love, and I hope you learn that from her. Love looks differently for each person. I demonstrate it differently than Mommy and you kids will also have your own love languages, but we are family and we need to not give up on each other.

I hope, children, that you one day can have a marriage like Mommy and me. I hope that you challenge one another and love each other madly and deeply. Please, please don’t ever lose sight of your spouse, and work towards giving them what they think they need.

Love,

Daddy