8 Years

Something occurred to me yesterday as Josh and I celebrated eight years of marriage. This is the first time in my life I have no plan for the future. I had my original plan for so long, then it morphed into our plan to start a family through fertility treatments, then through adoption. The plan ended with having kids though, and I only just realized I never planned passed my thirtieth birthday. I don't know why. 

I am a planner by nature. Not generally on the small scale. My sense of time management is lacking to say the least. On the larger scale of life though, I plan the heck out of it. Or at least I did. I'll be thirty next year (whaaaaaa?) and I have no idea what the rest of my life will look like. Not that I had much of an idea when I did have a plan. Is that laughter I hear God? Josh laughs at me and my "planning" too. When I told him my realization over not having a plan, and my amazement over this, he responded with a smirk and said in a sing song voice "you need a plan to make a plan for the plany-plan-ness." Ya. 

To celebrate our anniversary we went out to dinner. A lovely, tiny little restaurant close to home. Although it is a well known and popular restaurant, somehow we ended up with the whole place to ourselves. Tuesdays must be an off night. It was great though. After placing our orders the waiter came back and told us the chef had made something special, lobster tail with garlic and tomato pasta. Josh stuck with his steak, but I opted for the special, and it was awesome! We sat and talked in the quiet, nothing but low classical music and our voices. After dinner the waiter brought out a complimentary chocolate mousse cake and wished us a happy anniversary. It couldn't have been more lovely. Having such a quiet, peaceful, simple celebration was a big contrast to our first years of marriage. I pray the years to come more closely resemble the themes of last night. Quiet. Peaceful. Simple. 

My husband hasn't changed much in the last eight years, but he's also changed a lot. He is still stubborn (in a good way), funny, determined, strong, and faithful. Unlike me, he is not a large-scale life planner, he's small scale, and I'm grateful for that. He can plan the everyday things of life better than anyone I know. He is always on time to everything. He has hopes and ambitions for the future, but he is much better at following God's big life plan for us than I am. I think we balance each other very well. Sitting at dinner last night though, we were both, for once, on the same page of the "life plan". No clue what's coming and no desire to control it. It felt good. Really good. 

Just realized we didn't take any pictures on our eighth anniversary. We took mental pictures instead.