Today is my first day of the love dare, but I’m going to end it tomorrow because it didn’t officially start until this evening when my husband got home from work.
A little background about my relationship with my husband and our Marriage…
We met on the internet, catholicsingles.com, back in August of 2005. He is in the Marine Corps and was over in Iraq at the time during his second tour of duty, and was due to return home that September. I was starting college at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas at the end of August/beginning of September. He emailed me on catholicsingles just as I was about to take my profile down (I figured it was pointless since I was starting school and figured I’d meet someone during my 4 years there), and when I looked at his profile, I knew something was different about him. I can’t describe it, but I was so excited to write him back. I’m from St. Paul, MN., and he is from Atlanta, GA. We began talking via email, and each day our emails became longer and longer. We couldn’t wait to write each other back, it was such a crazy addiction! We were realizing more and more that we had so much in common, it was scary! Then he told me that he owned his own company that he started over in Iraq, a crime scene cleanup company, and that he was going to be attending a seminar to get certified for his business for a week from October 9th - 15th in Irving, Texas!!! He was already signed up for the seminar, the only thing he needed to do was get the plane ticket. He also said that he could’ve chosen from a few different companies to get his certification from in the country, but he chose the one in Irving because he felt that that was the best one. It turns out that his hotel was only about 5-10 minutes away from the University of Dallas, and we both really felt like God had His hand in this. We found all of this out within 2 weeks of talking to each other. We continued to correspond via email, telephone, webcam etc, letters until we finally met, in person, on October 9th, 2005 - and the rest is History! We’ve been together ever since.
We were married on December 29th, 2007 after about 2 1/2 years long distance. We now live in Jefferson, GA. We found out we were pregnant in early February of this year, and we now have a beautiful baby girl, Liliana Katherine who was born on October 10th. The interesting thing with her is that I went into the hospital to get induced on the 9th of October, (the same day Ben and I met 3 years earlier). We are both Catholic (hence, CATHOLICsingles.com) and we share all of the same beliefs and moral values. I come from a very large family of 9 children, and he is the oldest of 5. Both of our families are great Christian/Catholic families with lots of love to give, and we feel so blessed that our daughter has great aunts and uncles and grandparents on BOTH sides of the family because that’s hard to find in today’s society. We still find ourselves looking 3 years back and we can’t believe how amazing it is that we just found each other out of millions of people on the internet of all places, while we were on opposite ends of the world, both of us from complete opposite ends of the United States (literally!!!), and now we’re together and happy as ever!
So why the love dare? It was brought to my attention by my wonderful husband the other night during a discussion/small argument that I’ve become quite selfish. (He didn’t tell me that, it was conclusion that i drew from it). When I first got pregnant, I was extremely sick, and my husband, being the chivalrous man that he is, (and neat freak might I add…it’s the Marine in him) always told me to take it easy, and he’d handle the house work. Well, the middle of my pregnancy was great, but I grew more and more uncomfortable, and towards the end, my back was hurting so bad I could barely walk most of the time. So for about 3/4 of our marriage I’ve been pregnant, and he’s been doing next to all of the housework. We were both working during that entire time, and now I’m staying at home with Liliana, and we’re getting ready to move into a house. Our apartment is in shambles with boxes, and it’s driving him crazy because he can’t focus! I noticed earlier this week that we weren’t getting along very well, and there was a lot of tension in the air. Finally, 2 nights ago, I asked him what was wrong. It took a while to get him to open up. In fact, at first he said, “Nothing…” and proceeded to roll over in bed. With his back facing me, I begged him to tell me what the real problem was. And that’s when we had the discussion. He opened up about how he feels like he’s doing all of the work and that he thinks I could be doing a lot more to help out at home. He didn’t belittle my role as a mother, and he knows that it’s harder and more demanding than we, as mothers get credit for most of the time, but he also knows that there are millions and millions of mothers out there who are also housewives and he felt like he was playing the ‘housewife and father’ roles. It then occurred to me that I’ve been very selfish lately. I will admit that there were so many times, in fact almost 100% of the time, that there would be something that needed to get done; dishes, laundry, the bed needed to be made, the bathroom needed cleaning, vaccuuming etc., and I just wouldn’t do it because I had gotten so used to him doing it, that it was just easier for me to think, “he’ll take care of it when he gets home.” Well, that habitual behavior has gotten in the way of us working as a team.
We saw Fireproof back when the movie first came out, a couple weeks before Liliana was born. We both loved it! The wonderful thing about our marriage right now is not that we’re still ‘newlyweds’ and everything is going amazingly - because it’s not always going that way - it’s that we’re both so open to God’s calling of us to do His will. My husband loves God with his whole heart and soul! He is constantly leading me by example everyday, and I love him for that.
Some neat things that I wanted to share: I’ve thought about going to www.fireproofmymarriage.com before, but I never did just because I never remembered to when I actually got to the computer. Well, today, as I was home by myself, I had a lot of time to think about my behavior, and I thought, I need to visit that website. In doing so, I felt compelled to go buy the book. I also thought that it would be an excellent gift for my husband for our Anniversary. So, out of curiousity, I decided to count how many days from today that it was until December 29th. (Technically tomorrow because I’m ending day 1 tomorrow night so that I could have one full day of practice). To my surprise it is exactly 40 days! I almost fell over. Of all days to 1. feel compelled to get on the internet and FINALLY go the website and 2. go buy the book - I chose today. Why? God only knows!
We’ve already decided that we’re going to attend Mass on our Anniversary at the church we were married at in Minnesota when we visit my family over Christmas. I, personally, decided that I am going to keep this love dare to myself until then, and on our Anniversary, tell my wonderful husband what I’ve been doing for the past 40 days, and give him my copy of my journal, along with one of his own. Another neat thing that I wanted to share was that when I went to the book store today to purchase the book, there were exactly 2 left, and I felt like that was God telling me to get one for my husband as well. I purchased the last 2 on the shelf, and I’ve got one copy hidden from him, and the other in my nightstand. Tomorrow night I will write in the journal about how my day one dare went. To be honest, it’s been quite simple (just like the book says) because we dont say mean or hurtful things to each other on a regular basis, usually only if we are really upset with each other…which isn’t very often, and even then, it is unacceptable, and a horrible example to set for Liliana and our future children.
I feel like it’s important to note that even though our marriage isn’t ‘hanging by a thread’ as the book states, I dont ever want our marriage to get to that point, and I feel like we need to start doing the love dare now while we are still ‘newlyweds.’ We should’ve started this from day one.
I hope you all enjoyed reading about my life with my husband and I pray that you all have a wonderful 40-day journey. Please keep me in your prayers!!!
-Megan
