The other night I was laying in bed next to Dan as he slept, pondering marriage and what it all means. After the wedding people kept asking me if I felt different... but I didn't. It's kind of like when people ask you on your birthday how it feels to be "X" years old now, and you're always like... "it feels exactly like yesterday..." I suspect, like birthdays, marriage is similar in that the changes are gradual and you don't notice them until you wake up one day and there are aches and wrinkles where there didn't used to be. I never expected to "feel different" right after I got married, but I do wonder in what ways we'll change and grow in the next few years. How we'll get closer to each other, what conflicts we'll have to resolve, what challenges we'll be faced with.
I think about my parents and the experiences, challenges and changes they've been through in the past 31 years they've been together. And my grandparents as well, in their 60 years together, that's 21,900 days they've been married. That's more than twice the time I've even been alive! It's nice having strong models for committed marriages, though. I'm very thankful for such a positive family community that will be there to support our marriage throughout our life together.
![This print feels even more relevant today. We all joke about the dumpster fire of [insert year here], but the important message of this image to me is that *we persist* through the horrors. We stand, we fight— maybe for ourselves, maybe for oth](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/574dddd6d51cd4bc35c1609a/1730935170369-03GPKQ5NF73VAE65RHO6/image-asset.jpeg)
