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"It's not always rainbows and butterflies,

.it's compromise that moves us along."
,,,,,,,,,,,,,- She Will be Loved, Maroon 5
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People often comment to me about what a wonderful marriage Joe and I had together and it is true that it was great.

People also, with all the sincerity, talk about our love as a "once in a lifetime" type of love. I know that this is said with only the nicest thought for me, but I've got to say, really that it hurts to hear that. I am still (kind of?) young and it's hard for me to think that all my best days in terms of marriage and love are in the past. That's a depressing thought for me. Great, wonderful, fulfillling, YES, but once in a lifetime, for me, I hope not.

I would also like to acknowledge that Joe and I also had our share of hard times.....like everyone has.....especially when our kids were babies. We had the kinds of days when I wanted to run from our house screaming as far as I could get.....and I am sure there were days that he didn't want to come home from work. We had fights where we yelled so loud our neighbors could probably fill you in on the details. That's just life I think.

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I remember standing on the deck one day with Joe, both of us basically pissed off at each other and the world, and we had this conversation about not wanting to focus anymore on what we didn't have "because of" our choice to have kids (mostly TIME for each of us to do things that we wanted on our own) and we would consciously start to focus on what we did have, which was each other, two great, healthy kids and basically a great life. That conversation was one of many turning points in our relationship that we both committed to personally through our own thoughts and actions.

In other words, we expressed to each other in lots of different ways "this is what you give to me and add to my life" instead of "this is what you take from me and what I am living without".

I also remember that early in our marriage I heard someone talking about an idea that relationships have seasons...as in Spring/Summer/Winter/Fall. At the time I heard this concept I think that our marriage was in a gray state of Winter and I just kept in mind that soon would come Spring and then Summer. Summer did come again. I would say that when Joe died last year we were in extended season of Summer in terms of our marriage. We were totally in love as you all know. That's why I am so focused in this blog on all the good things that he brought to my life in terms of being his wife. But it was not perfect. It was not all rainbows and butterflies. It truly was compromise that moved us along.