Each chapter of life brings with it new interests, new opportunities, and especially new people. Heaven brought me my new person last year in the form of a charismatic, compassionate, and Christlike man whom I now gratefully and wholeheartedly call my husband. Returning home from my mission closed one chapter of my life and opened up a new one: marriage.
After Sam and I got married, we moved into a small basement apartment in southeast Provo. Located in a friendly family neighborhood, our small abode is only a few minutes drive from our university campus. Karma, our 87 year old landlady, so kindly rented her basement under her house to us. Though the basement is modest in size, furniture gives possibility to space, family pictures dot and liven the walls, and lots of wedding gifts add life, color, and familiarity to what used to be a cold, empty storage unit.
Our living room acts as our room of council where we work together as equal partners to handle the day-to-day living. It is there where we unite as comrades in our weekly planning and scheduling and enjoy the warm Spirit that enters whenever we hold family home evening. We've already put the well-worn, plum colored couch Sam received from his old boss to good use. The couch has played an important part in our newlywed life as we build family memories such as watching movies, snuggling, and hosting a variety of guests; the couch has also endured difficult times as we cry tears of frustration (mostly on my part) or figure out important grown-up things like finances and future plans.
Adjacent to the couch rests a black bookshelf, the tallest piece of furniture in our living room, which towers over our small coffee table. This bookshelf represents a union of two different, contrasting lives. The combination of various things neither Sam nor I are willing to depart with find home together on the same shelves as Sam's various art drawings and projects, as well as his prized mission relics and old books and movies are mixed with my Korean textbooks, old journals, and a charming cat figurine. Such a mixture on our bookshelf of things from our past lives represent the blending of our new lives as husband and wife, partners for eternity.
Adjacent to the couch rests a black bookshelf, the tallest piece of furniture in our living room, which towers over our small coffee table. This bookshelf represents a union of two different, contrasting lives. The combination of various things neither Sam nor I are willing to depart with find home together on the same shelves as Sam's various art drawings and projects, as well as his prized mission relics and old books and movies are mixed with my Korean textbooks, old journals, and a charming cat figurine. Such a mixture on our bookshelf of things from our past lives represent the blending of our new lives as husband and wife, partners for eternity.
The bedroom down the hall acts as our own sort of temple sanctuary--sacred, deeply personal, and far removed from the world. It beckons us every night after a long day of classes, work, and other demands, and the travails of the day dissipate once we start our nightly ritual of getting ready for bed. Sam despises the word, routine. A routine, Sam says, is for those who do things mindlessly; a ritual is for those who do things with care and awareness. And so our nighttime rituals uniquely enhance our marital bliss as we remember and appreciate the whys of routinized living. We brush our teeth together, we shower together, we read the Book of Mormon together, and we pray together. We do it all together, for without doing so, we so easily fall prey to routine. We talk about the stuff that really matters to us--family, Christ, our marriage. I will lie on our bed, and Sam will oftentimes give me a full-body massage if I've been having a particularly taxing day. He also believes that husband and wife should always go to bed together at the same time, and so if I have to stay up late to finish homework, he will stay up with me; and yet if I want to go to bed early, Sam drops everything he is doing and hops right into bed with me, eager to cuddle as sleep takes over my body. Our little sanctuary down the hall has become such an essential part of our home.
Here's one thing I've learned in all of this:
Before I met Sam, I never envisioned I would get married so early after serving a full-time mission, or that I would end up living in a small basement apartment in southeast Provo so happy and so in love with a man who in every sense of the word completes me. I knew I didn't need to reach optimal financial stability or become more perfect in Christ as an individual before I found an eternal companion, but I didn't really believe it in my heart. I was so perfectly content with marrying down the road, at which point I would somehow magically feel prepared to meet the man with whom I was to spend eternity. But the game of life doesn't work like that, and the Lord has a funny way of changing our plans when we least expect it so that we have an opportunity to exercise our faith in the Savior. Sam literally splashed into my life and changed my mind about everything. Ultimately, the thought of spending an eternity with the best man I know quelled all my concerns and reduced them to triviality.
In all of newlywed living thus far, I've learned that one of the most exciting things about marriage is the home. Empty space becomes a place for a life together, a realm where both of our ambitions, rituals, worries, and baggage unite in strength and support in weakness, empathize in awareness and flourish in creation. Certain rooms, when furnished with love, awaken potential and engender possibility. The well-worn purple couch, the build-it-yourself IKEA bookcase, the bedroom at the end of the hall--all of these hallmarks of our apartment truly create, reflect, and build more than our home--they embody and empower who we are and who we will be together for the rest of our lives.
Now excuse me while I go kiss my husband like crazy.
Before I met Sam, I never envisioned I would get married so early after serving a full-time mission, or that I would end up living in a small basement apartment in southeast Provo so happy and so in love with a man who in every sense of the word completes me. I knew I didn't need to reach optimal financial stability or become more perfect in Christ as an individual before I found an eternal companion, but I didn't really believe it in my heart. I was so perfectly content with marrying down the road, at which point I would somehow magically feel prepared to meet the man with whom I was to spend eternity. But the game of life doesn't work like that, and the Lord has a funny way of changing our plans when we least expect it so that we have an opportunity to exercise our faith in the Savior. Sam literally splashed into my life and changed my mind about everything. Ultimately, the thought of spending an eternity with the best man I know quelled all my concerns and reduced them to triviality.
In all of newlywed living thus far, I've learned that one of the most exciting things about marriage is the home. Empty space becomes a place for a life together, a realm where both of our ambitions, rituals, worries, and baggage unite in strength and support in weakness, empathize in awareness and flourish in creation. Certain rooms, when furnished with love, awaken potential and engender possibility. The well-worn purple couch, the build-it-yourself IKEA bookcase, the bedroom at the end of the hall--all of these hallmarks of our apartment truly create, reflect, and build more than our home--they embody and empower who we are and who we will be together for the rest of our lives.
Now excuse me while I go kiss my husband like crazy.
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