This Is Marriage: Day 347

Pete asked me "Do you think this separation is helping us grow closer and our relationship stronger?" Yes and no and it's complicated. I would not recommend deployment as a main ingredient in a happy marriage. The physical separation is hard. It just really, really sucks. But I think we are definitely stronger, though probably that has more to do with our attitude towards the situation than the situation itself. Challenges can make us stronger if we look at them as opportunities instead of obstacles, if we focus on gratitude instead of griping. Would we have wished to go through this? Hell no. But we chose each other. I chose this hot slice of man beef and he happened to come with a side of Navy. And the Navy chose to deploy him to Afghanistan this year. That is life. Sometimes things happen that are out of our control. So we can complain about it, which is pointless. Or we can get on board and make the best of it. We are get on board kind of people.

I've been thinking about something G said at Fit1 yesterday morning. He had me do a new ab move I hadn't done before and I said "oof that's hard," to which he replied "We do hard things." He said it so nonchalantly but also encouragingly, his point being it's hard but you can do it, you do hard things all the time. Yeah we do, I thought. And that makes all the difference. In everything. Ever.

I think one of the reasons Pete and I are so happy together is that we have similar attitudes towards life. We don't avoid the hard things. We don't take life, or ourselves, too seriously. We take risks. We set goals and work to achieve them, whether it's training for a race or saving for early retirement. We had our own awesome lives before we met and then we combined them to build an even more awesome and adventurous life together. Pete asked me to be his girlfriend during a half marathon road race and to be his wife after a 3 day, 40+ mile trail run in Oregon. We've had good days and bad days. We've laughed about both. We've crossed many finish lines hand in hand.

This year we are doing hard things individually. Well, Pete is doing hard things. He just earned the Enlisted Expeditionary Warfare Pin. He's going through the process of becoming a Chief Petty Officer. I, on the other hand, am just doing a lot of running, strength training and being ridiculous, things that are more playing hard than working hard. But even though we are far apart, we are doing the hard things together, supporting each other, making each other laugh. On happy days. On sad, stressed out days. All the days we get.

Marriage is doing hard things, hand in hand.

Lyric of the moment: "Our words are strong and our hearts are kind. Let me tell you just exactly what's on my mind. You are the best thing, you are the best thing, you are the best thing, ever happened to me..." ~Ray LaMontagne "You Are The Best Thing"