Al and Joe, Henry and Ro

Three years.

It’s hard to describe a thousand days all strung together. 

The first year of our marriage was among the hardest of my life. The only thing I can liken it to is an identity crisis. I didn’t know how to be Allison and how to be a wife. Somehow that intersection was one I struggled at length to find. It seems so natural to most, and yet not me. It was a year of shifting. Despite my internal struggle, the thing I remember most about our first year was the fun. And that’s no coincidence, I am married to a good time Charlie, after all. There was the trip to the Virgin Islands, the time the apartment flooded [the day after our wedding, no less] and we decided to leave it and go get BBQ with our friends—and the time we drove back to Raleigh on a sheet of ice just so that I could see my college roommate because I missed her so much. We hosted what would be our first annual Friendsgiving that year, and Joe started the journey to finish his education.

Year two was the year for maintaining. We were two ships passing in the night most of the time. We were paying our dues and hoping they’d pay off. We spent a great deal of time missing one another. Joe upped his course load, and I finally got the position I’d be working toward for over two years. We said “someday” more times than I could count.

The last year has been my favorite. We’ve grown and stretched with one another. We have really become we. There has been so much less selfishness and so much more teamwork. We see each other more often, and we have learned the value of that precious time. There is more future talk, more grace and more understanding. 

Love can look like a lot of things. I can still see it when things are tough and when they’re ugly. When we’re working through it—whatever “it” may be. But to me, love mostly looks like this picture. 

Happy anniversary to the best person I know. I am eternally glad we chose one another, and that we keep choosing one another.