1) We’ve grown up together.  I had a curfew until the day we got married.  He lived with his grandmother.  We figured out this whole adult thing together, formed habits together, and found our way in this world… together.

2) We take turns chasing our dreams, and meld them together when we can.  The first two years we lived my dreams: Stable life in my hometown, paying down debt.  The next two years we chased his dreams: Music career in Atlanta.  Since then we’ve flip flopped between the two and mostly built our dreams together.  I’m so glad we both took time to focus on the other person’s wants.

3) I’m finally starting to understand the man I married.  He’s a creative genius.  I think he started 3 businesses our first year of marriage.  He had wild dreams and mostly I let him do his own thing because I didn’t understand it all.  Fast forward 9 years and we’ve found our groove.  He comes up with the wildly creative ideas (that are truly astounding), and then I handle the financial and logistical aspects of making them happen.

4) We work hard.  On any given night, after a full day of work, we put Hazel to bed and go right back to work.  That’s not a new thing… that’s been going on for 9 years!  We constantly hear we’re the busiest people ever.  It’s not that we want to be busy, but it takes a lot to live our dreams, and we’re starting to see solid results.  I wouldn’t change that for anything!  Over the years we’ve put our efforts towards making our work something we love, so even though we’re working late at night, at least it’s something fun!  

5) We have goals.  I remember the first goal we set as a married couple: To save $1000 for our emergency fund.  At the time, it seemed like a gigantic goal that would take a year or more to achieve.  We quickly realized that when we put all our efforts towards a goal, we make it happen fast!

6) We’re constantly trying to become better people.  This is the hardest one for me.  It’s so hard to measure how to be a better human.  Compassion, generosity, empathy, actions, reactions… all of these come in to play.  But I love that we both push each other towards that every day.

7) Our hearts are in the same place. Each time we’ve made a major life decision, we’ve each come to the same conclusion separately (although usually months apart).  We typically have the same views on religion, politics, and humanity, and we always agonize over the same social issues.  Over the past year the homeless population has really touched our hearts. We have no idea where God is leading us with this, but love that we’re both feeling it at the same time.

8) We accidentally dress the same ALL the time.  If we don’t see each other in the morning, we’ll almost always end up twinning.

9) We don’t measure ourselves by others standards.  If we want to sit in a restaurant and play on our phones, we do it and ignore all the judgey looks from others.  To us, driving a car with 320,000 miles on it is a badge of honor.  When all our friends were buying houses and cars and having kids, we didn’t.  It wasn’t right for us at the time.  We’re confident in who we are and the choices we make!  Mistakes happen, but at least they are mistakes on our own terms and not because we were trying to be like someone else.  To us, success is being the best version of ourselves, not being better than someone else at a random task.

Can I add a 10th one?  Because really, when it all boils down, this is my favorite thing about us.  We don’t take each others words too seriously.  Have you ever said something you didn’t mean?  Or said something that everyone took a totally different way than you intended?  We’ve got forgive and forget down to a science on those things.  Life is too short to fuss over semantics.  I feel so bad for politicians when a reporter nails them for contradicting something they said 14 years ago.  People change, opinions and viewpoints change, and sometimes we just say stupid things we don’t really mean.  Grace has to be given readily.