year 11

In early 2020, several months before our tenth wedding anniversary, I thought we could go somewhere fun, Hawaii maybe. We don’t often travel just to travel, and what better reason to splurge on a beach vacation sans kids than to celebrate a decade of marriage?

Well, we know what 2020 brought us. I don’t even remember exactly what we did to commemorate ten years of being married. Likely we got our favorite takeout and watched a favorite show. That’s often how we connect, ten—now eleven—years in. We go to our comfortable places: our favorite restaurant, our favorite TV shows, our favorite desserts.

We don’t have any big plans for our eleventh anniversary today. But I’ve spent all month looking back at twenty-three-year-old Charlotte, how she dived into matrimony with a full and committed heart. Charlotte and Josh of eleven years ago didn’t really know what marriage was, what kind of love we’d at some point be required to mine in our weary hearts.

We also didn’t know just how much love we could hold and all the many ways our love could manifest. We’ve loved in joy and excitement, in the miracle of holding new babies, in the infectious joy of Christmas morning with tiny feet pattering down the stairs, in being each other’s best and biggest cheerleaders. We’ve also loved in grief and anxiety, in the fog of mental health struggles, the pain of changing family structures, and in the unknowability of evolving faith. We’ve loved and we’ve loved and we’ve loved.

Our ways of marking time and milestones are simple. From the outside, maybe we’re a little basic, boring even. But I look over at a man who is my safe space. He’s the first one I call when I have something to celebrate, the first one I reach to when I need to cry. He’s the one I sometimes call in the middle of the day just to hear his voice. We don’t have marriage or each other figured out. We get angry and hurt, and we sometimes say angry and hurtful things. But we love. We try. We hold hands and press forward together. Who needs Hawaii when you have that? (Well, let’s still make that happen, yeah?)

Happy anniversary, love. Eleven years in, you’re still my favorite.