My parents celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary this week.

To me, their marriage has always been a respite from the world. Whenever anything seemed crazy or unclear, I was lucky: my parents would always be together.

I’m not proud that I may have taken it for granted. I didn’t know anything different. But now that I’m old enough to know friends who’ve gone through their own divorces – and even appearing as a character witness requiring me to stand before a judge in one divorce case – marriage isn’t something that I take lightly.

Not anymore.

Gordon and I will be celebrating our fourth anniversary this week. And it got me thinking about all the changes that have taken place in our lives over the last few months in particular.

I started a new job. He started an internship at a local church we felt right at home in. Our little boy turned two. We’re nowhere near 35 years, and yet, so much has packed into the last few months, it feels like we’ve always had each other’s backs.

This, after four years of Gordon studying, gaining chaplaincy experience at a local hospital. Me working at the university he was attending to pay for his courses so we could graduate debt-free. Him staying home with our infant and figuring out how to be a father on top of a grad student.

No easy task without the 3 a.m. wake-up calls, from what I can remember.

Still, I can’t help but feel that tonight as we sit side-by-side on a new couch that we scraped and saved for; him wrapping up the last few polishes on his pastoral applications, and me drawing up a few contracts for my freelance business for the month of July, that this season is coming to a slow close.

Last summer, I released an e-book about the Small Beginnings of motherhood. How those first groggy nights of parenthood were such a blur. How we put Johnny down to bed at 11 because, well, we went to bed at 11.

Shouldn’t the whole family be on the same sleep schedule?

*Shrugs*

But I realize now that we’ve been in a small beginning all along. All of us. From head to toe. From day one to right now, this very moment, side-by-side on our new, white couch.

Our small beginning has the potential to unravel into a whole new story.

And I’m very excited for it to begin.