She Inspires Me

This is definitely not a helicopter story. This falls under the category of family and feelings. Joni and I have been married for about eight and a half years. In my opinion we have a great marriage. But it seems to be a bit subjective doesn't it? That's why I say 'in my opinion.' There seems to be a lot of experts on the subject these days but often I'm not even sure they know the perfect recipe. I tend to think that one of the major ingredients that's overlooked is whether or not you can both keep from becoming bored of each other. I know that sounds a bit harsh but I tend to think it's true. We all evolve as people and personalities as we age. Major life events influence perception of what's important and what constitutes a good time. Major life events like children... need I say more? In our relationship, I have some predominant instances that I can think of when something happened that made me fall in love, or fall deeper in love with my wife. Most recently was in June of this year.

She'd been fairly committed to training for a marathon. When I say 'fairly' I don't mean to say that she wasn't doing her best, I mean that it had a relatively high priority but way below the other priorities of child raising, being a wonderful wife and the master of the household. In between all that she managed to fit in as many runs as possible. Which in her mind wasn't quite enough to be feeling really ready to run a marathon. But with some convincing, run a marathon she did! It's certainly not how well she did that impressed me so much. It was the guts she showed to run it and run it hard. We had been camping in Tofino for the two days prior to the run and she had stayed with some girlfriends in a hotel the night before to get a little more sleep than in a tent with the four of us. I managed to drag the kids out of bed and took them in their jammies to cheer on mom at about 5 k into the race. When she ran by us that first time, it hit me! I was so proud of her! Then we went back to the campground to pack up and get to Ucluelet before the finish. The drive to Ucluelet seemed amazingly long thinking of it in terms of running! We finally caught up to her several kilometers from the finish and got out to cheer her on again. Then we headed for the finish line to watch the finish. As we watched her come down the final stretch for the finish line, I was hit with feelings of pride like I have never felt in my life. It brought me to tears. This was something that she had done completely for herself. She wasn't looking for congratulations or praise. She didn't set out to prove anything to anyone. And I fell in love all over again with my wife, her courage and her strength. Congratulations Honey.

I was just to the point of being ready to publish this post and decided to re-read it again. I realized that I had made my point about the importance of not becoming bored with your spouse and then became somewhat de-railed with my train of thought being so impressed with Joni's marathon. I need to add that it is through both of our desires to challenge ourselves and strive towards bigger goals in life that we keep the boredom away. We can often spend entire evenings just dreaming of what other options we have in life. There is certainly no shortage of dreams between us, just the realization in most cases that we truly enjoy our home, our life and family and don't feel we need to change much to stay happy. I look forward to a long life of challenges and dreams with my wonderful wife.