The Sun is the Same in a Relative Way

Sometimes I get into a very sentimental and nostalgic mood (if it is even possible to be nostalgic at the age of 23) and can't help but think about how the way my life has turned out. I went to the jeweler's this past week to pick up my wedding band and wore it during the ride home. It was almost startling to look at my hand laid across the steering wheel, clad with a shiny piece of metal, and realize that I will be starting a family with Bethany in less than 2 months. I sometimes wonder what my parents felt like when they were getting married and how they feel looking back on their children 24 years later. Families are legacies. I think I understand now more than ever that my parents had no idea what they were doing but knew that everything would be okay.

I turned 23 on Thursday and wondered where the time has gone. In the wise words of Pink Floyd, "You run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking...Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older...Shorter of breath and one day closer to death." I hope that I am not close to death but the time seems to run faster and faster away from me and I'm left not knowing what happened.

In the midst of all this deep thought it dawned on me that Bethany and I have known each other for 7 years now. It is quite amazing that through all the riotous times and changes that come with passing through being a teenager to adulthood that we have remained friends and are together today. We never would have made it if we had stayed together then because...well, at least I can speak for myself in saying that I was an idiot when I was a teenager. I'm sure Bethany was an angel all along. The things I remember from our teenage years together are strange and haphazard. I remember an ugly-as-sin 1990's era MPV mini-van, learning to drive stick shift on a Jetta that I was convinced would fall apart at any second, our Chemistry teacher who insisted on calling Bethany "Beth", watching the Notebook for the first time and maybe shedding a tear (please don't tell anyone), getting in trouble by my Mom, Jen, and Ryan for going over to Jen & Ryan's when they weren't there and we had been given explicit instructions not to go there (we have since forgiven and forgotten...mostly), and breaking up with Bethany over the phone (I know, typical teenage thing to do) while I was sitting at a stoplight down the street from my house.

I remember writing each other during our missions. The night before I left I received a phone call from Bethy. She was in the airport coming home from China and it was a very random and unexpected phone call. I am convinced that if she had not called me that night we would not be getting married. It is a hard thing to explain but that phone call let us both know that we were going to stay in touch with each other during my mission (and hers even though she didn't know she was going yet). We wrote each other often and I always had thoughts of "what if" that clamored for attention in my brain. To be honest, a part of myself fell in love with Bethany through the letters that we wrote, knowing that we were both doing the greatest work on the earth that we could be doing. We were connected by those letters and our friendship grew much deeper than I had expected.

And then we both ended up at school in the middle of beautiful-but-barren southern Idaho. The rest is more or less history at this point. I knew that if we started dating that we would get married. It was never unclear to me. I am glad that she decided to date me and marry me. I am glad that she laughs at my silly jokes even when they aren't funny. I am glad that she is the type of person who makes me better.

The point of this post is not to be sappy even if it comes across as such. We are happy together and I know that this was supposed to happen. There are too many little things that "just worked out" for any of this to be coincidence or convenience. I am glad that there is someone orchestrating our lives in a very real way and giving us choices and paths that we can travel down. I am happy that my life, all 23 years of it, has turned out the way that it has.