Friends, today is our third wedding anniversary! We had the most beautiful weather yesterday – crisp, clear, warm, blue skies, low 70’s – and it reminded me so strongly of the weather on September 15, 2012. You’d better believe I’m still grateful for that!

I challenged myself to include just one favorite photo in today’s post, and I did, even though it nearly killed me. Tanja Lippert is and will always be my hero — I think she is beyond compare in the realm of wedding photography. Having her by our side on that day is another thing for which I’m still grateful!

Earlier this year, to mark our ten year dativersary, I ruminated a bit on our ceremony reading from C.S. Lewis. I was just reading over the post where I shared all three of our readings again, and a different one is standing out to me at the moment — our reading from Colossians 3.

From where I’m sitting right now, these verses make my heart feel a bit swollen and my throat a bit lumpy. Put on compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience, love… forgive… let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts… and be thankful. This is the reading our pastor chose to draw his message from, and in it, he told us that these words were telling us that we’d have to put on our “work clothes” every day of our marriage.

I have found that this is true – doing those things that Paul commands is not always easy, and sometimes requires work. But it is unlike any other work I’ve ever experienced. It is a JOY to do these paradoxical things, to make myself meek, to be kind, to forgive. It’s a joy because it’s in the service of one who always does the same for me. It’s still hard — my most basic instinct is always to care about myself above everyone else — but it is so sweet.

And I am so very, very thankful. (That part is easy.)

P.S. More wedding photos and a film here, two year anniversary post here, one year here.

I have never been a baby person. It’s fairly well known among family and friends that I “don’t like babies,” as I mentioned in our announcement post. I’ll never be the one offering to hold your baby, and I don’t even think all babies are that cute. I even had a pact with a dear (baby loving) friend in high school that she would take any of my future babies from ages 0-2 and I would take hers from 14-16.

Rather than a cold, cold heart, I think this stems from a general uncomfortableness with the littlest among us, since I was never much around babies growing up. I did babysit, but only for kids out of diapers! Babies just seemed very fragile, and they can’t use words to tell you what they need (and I like words).

Perhaps because of this, even coming up on our third anniversary, John and I were never on the receiving end of the stereotypical pressure to have kids. I’m sure I probably would have hated it if we had been, but at some point, I actually started to get paranoid – do people think we aren’t fit to be parents?? This obvious (to me) conversational hole was especially ironic, because that very topic was in almost constant rotation between the two of us and our closest friends.

18 weeks!

Thinking back, we began having serious conversations about the future of our family at the beginning of 2014. This was my starting point: I can’t really vocalize why, and I’m certainly not convinced that I’m going to love the baby stage, but when I picture my life, there are treasured children in it. For me, that was enough to move forward. I also knew I wanted to be a younger mom, having my first child before 30.

My hunch is that John started from a similar position, but unlike me, he was not willing to move forward without being able to vocalize a more concrete and rational reason that we should do so. To gather ideas, we embarked on a yearlong quest to answer the question, “Why do people have children?”, hoping to find answers that would resonate with us. We posed this question to each other countless times. We did the same to friends with and without kids, those who knew they wanted them and those who were undecided. We researched online. We read books and blog posts. We listened to sermons and podcasts. We prayed.

The problem is this: all of the “negatives” about having children are very real and concrete: they cost a ton of money. They restrict your freedom. They can derail your financial progress and goals. They complicate your schedule. They complicate your travel. They’re messy. They’re needy. They keep you up at night. They don’t know how to use the bathroom.

On the other hand, the positives are generally intangible, and, almost by definition, unable to be understood or experienced before actually having children of your own.

While an interesting exercise and good conversation fodder, this seemingly unending quest was at times frustrating to me – it seemed like there was no possible answer that would convince John, and all I wanted was to move forward since I believed we were ultimately on the same page and kind of just wasting time. Just recently, though, I read something that really helped me understand why this wasn’t possible for him. It’s from his results from the scarily-accurate, Myers-Briggs based 16 Personalities quiz:

INTJs will strive to remain rational no matter how attractive the end goal may be, and every idea, whether generated internally or soaked in from the outside world, must pass the ruthless and ever-present “Is this going to work?” filter. This mechanism is applied at all times, to all things, and all people.

Apply it we did. We heard many perspectives from many people, and generated several ourselves, as to why people might have children. Ultimately, these were the most convincing to us:

Children will crack open a part of your heart that can’t be opened any other way. Not a new idea, but I would say the way Darren Whitehead in particular described this was extremely moving and heartfelt. I don’t want to miss out on an opportunity to learn about love.

Your relationship with your children will teach you more than anything else can about your relationship with God the father. This totally makes sense to me. I know what being a child is like, but even just being pregnant, I can already tell that experiencing the parent half of the equation will be truly eyeopening. I’m so looking forward to this.

You get to rediscover the world as you teach and walk alongside your child. This is the most obviously fun one! Though the magnitude of shepherding a child is not lost on me, I’m also so excited for all of the people, places, things, and ideas I’ll get to introduce our little one to – and experience anew alongside him or her!

Having children is the greatest expression of hope humans can participate in. We believe the best is yet to come. We are not cynical people. Deciding to have children is tantamount to saying we believe the world they will grow up in will be bright and beautiful, and that’s a statement of faith we want to make.

One more reason on my list: my husband is so precious to me — truly one of the best people I know — that it’s hard for me to even imagine getting to parent someone who was made from him, alongside him. Just thinking about that kind of makes me feel like my heart might explode.

By the end of 2014, we were convinced that children were in our future. However, even armed with that knowledge, we still felt hesitant about jumping in! With our backgrounds, I don’t think either of us would ever have stated that we felt 100% prepared or ready (financially, emotionally, or otherwise) to have a baby. But that’s the beauty of the system – you don’t just decide one day that you’re ready to have a kid, and one arrives on your doorstep the next day.

Once we flipped the switch and actively started trying to get pregnant, it’s kind of crazy how quickly my feelings of hesitation turned to impatience and even anxiety – I wanted to be pregnant immediately! There are so many (really hard and sad) stories of infertility and miscarriage in my circles, and despite the fact that there was no indication in our families or my medical history that either would be a problem, my mind instantly went there. So when we did see PREGNANT show up on the test after just a couple of months, there was relief and joy. No tears :)

We waited a full five weeks to take it, and agreed to look at it together after waiting the obligatory three minutes — but he peeked and saw it first! I know many people find a clever way to share the news with their husbands, but I can’t imagine finding out without John by my side. That didn’t stop us, however, from coming up with creative ways to tell our families and friends – more on that in my next post!

To conclude, one of my biggest fears was that by lingering on The Question for so long, as well as all of the potential negatives of adding a baby to the family, we’d never get out from under them — that even once I was pregnant, John still wouldn’t be excited. However, I needn’t have worried, as that couldn’t be further from our reality now. He is SO excited — probably more excited than me — and clearly already loves this baby so much. (Another gem from 16 Personalities that helps explain this: INTJs trust their rationalism above all else, so when they come to a conclusion, they have no reason to doubt their findings.) People ask us if we’re nervous, and the answer is no – I think we thought through all of our nerves already, and now only joy and peace are left!

Friends, I’d love to hear: have you always felt clearly about having (or not having) children? If you have children or know you want to have them, why? Do any of the conclusions we came to resonate with you?

I did not grow up camping. (I would famously sign up for girl scout camping trips, get all the way to the parking lot, then refuse to get on the bus with everyone else.) NO ONE would mistake me for a tomboy (even though I grew up playing outside most of the time). So when John first started expressing an interest in camping, hiking, and backpacking our junior year of college, my first thought was, oh HECK no. No, thank you. You go do your thing; I’m great right here.

However, a hallmark of our relationship has always been quality time together. We do almost EVERYTHING together, minus the eight or so hours per day we’re at our jobs. If John is mowing the lawn, I’m probably out weeding something. If I’m working on stirrers, John is probably researching a trip in the chair beside me. We do have our own interests and hobbies, but we love being together and try to maximize that as much as we can. So this new activity that I was vehemently not interested in caused a tiff between us for awhile… until I eventually gave in :)

And gosh, I’m so glad I did! We’ve had some amazing adventures over the last few years and seen so many beautiful things by traveling on foot and sleeping away from civilization. By far the most impressive was our post-graduation hike in the Presidentials, summitting Mount Adams (the second highest peak in the Northeast!) and Mount Jefferson.

Yes, that photo is showing you we hiked on our own two feet ABOVE the clouds!! The beautiful thing about camping and hiking, though, is that you can have equally fun, challenging, and inspiring experiences closer to home and without as much time commitment (or sweat!). We’ve had some great adventures in North Carolina, too:

These days, we do less backpacking (where we carry everything on our backs and hike out to a campsite) and more car camping (which still involves sleeping in a tent, but there are usually bathrooms and running water and you don’t have to carry all of your supplies with you!). Both are fun; the main trade-off is convenience for breathtaking vistas! If you want to spend quality time with friends, I can’t think of a better bonding experience than sitting around a campfire with no distractions and hours together stretching in front of you. It’s like the grown-up version of a sleepover!

I wonder if any of y’all were surprised when I mentioned camping on EFM for the first time. Either way, I hope my experience encourages you to give camping and hiking a try if you’ve been hesitant in the past!

In my next post, I’ll share some of our camping favorites. Once you have a basic stock of supplies it’s a delightfully inexpensive and beautiful way to travel, but it can be intimidating and expensive when you’re just starting out!

This year, instead of setting traditional goals, I am practicing a fruit of the spirit each month to move closer to the person I hope to be. I explain more here!

It did not go unnoticed by me that likely my busiest month of this year fell on my designated “peace” month. Peaceful, it was not. (Hence the fact that I didn’t get around to writing a post at all!) The peace I’m interested in pursuing for this project, though, is less about the circumstances I find myself in and more about the disposition and mindset that guides me through them.

The peace I’m working toward is the peace of an un-ruffle-able mind, a head space that’s calm and quiet instead of roiling.

I don’t spend a lot of time obsessing, over analyzing, or worrying about things, but one thing I can do is hold a grudge. If I’m in a grumpy mood and John does something to annoy me, I’m capable of freezing him out for as long as I want. (This is not new – my family nickname growing up was Princess Thundercloud because of the ease with which I could show my displeasure.) On the other hand, if I do something to annoy John (it’s difficult, but it does happen), he forgives me just as soon as I show the slightest bit of contrition.

This is one thing I love about marriage, that you can show your ugly and your person says, yes, I see that, and I still love you. At its best, it’s a lifelong, up close and personal opportunity to learn, with grace upon grace given and received.

I imagine this inner peace is something that’s always been with John, in some form or another, but when I asked him about it several years ago, I was surprised and tickled by his answer. Apparently in eighth grade, his English teacher led the class on a tangent about how holding a grudge is letting the past consume your future, and therefore is among the stupidest things you can do. John’s eighth grade mind immediately connected this to a particular scene in The Lion King.

In it, Rafiki bops Simba on the head with his stick.
Simba: “Ouch, what’d you do that for?”
Rafiki: “It doesn’t matter! It’s in the past!”

Simple as that! Of course, there are some things in the past that do matter, but the vast (VAST) majority of minor injuries and injustices don’t, in fact, matter, and don’t deserve to be carried into the future. When your mind isn’t consumed with trying to remember why you’re angry at so-and-so or how the scales are balanced between you and what’s-his-name, it is free to be at peace. You are free to be at peace. A lesson I’m still learning, but trying to take to heart more every day.

I’d love to know: how peaceful is your mind? Are you great at holding a grudge or quick to forgive? Do you have a family nickname that you can’t quite escape? :)

P.S. Love and joy.