Aloha from Hawaii! We’re here celebrating a belated 20th wedding anniversary, and being away from the usual routines has given me a little space to reflect on the life we’ve built together and how quickly the years seem to pass.
Twenty years is a funny thing. When you’re young, you imagine the life you’ll build together. You have plans, expectations, and a picture in your mind of what the future will look like. But life has a way of writing its own story. Some chapters turn out better than you could have imagined. Others teach you things you never would have chosen to learn. And somewhere along the way, you realize that the beauty of a life together isn’t found in how closely it follows the plan. It’s found in how you navigate all the things you never could have planned for.
When I think about twenty years, I don’t just think about the milestones. I think about all the little moments that make up a life. The conversations that went late into the night, the decisions that shaped our family, the seasons when we were figuring things out as we went, and the days that felt completely ordinary at the time but are now part of the story I wouldn’t trade for anything.
There’s also something humbling about realizing how much life can change while you’re busy living it. The people we are today are different from the people we were twenty years ago. Our priorities shift. Our dreams evolve. We experience loss, celebrate new beginnings, face uncertainty, and learn things about ourselves we couldn’t have known at the start. And if we’re lucky, we get to grow through those changes alongside someone who has witnessed so many versions of us.
I think that’s one of the most meaningful parts of doing life with another person. They remember the seasons you sometimes forget. They know the story behind the milestones, the sacrifices that never made it into the photos, and the work that went into building the life you have today. They’ve seen the behind-the-scenes version of your life, not just the highlights. And there is something incredibly special about being known that way.
It also makes me think about how rarely we stop to recognize the life we’re actually living. We spend so much time working toward the next thing, getting through the next busy season, reaching the next milestone, or waiting for things to slow down. We tell ourselves we’ll celebrate when the work is done, when the kids are older, when the schedule clears, or when we finally have a little more time.
But life doesn’t really work that way. There will always be another season, another responsibility, another thing that needs our attention. And if we aren’t careful, we can spend so much time building a life that we forget to pause and appreciate it.
Maybe that’s what twenty years has taught me most. The life you want isn’t something you arrive at one day. It’s something you build, slowly and imperfectly, in the middle of everything else. And the people beside you aren’t just part of the story. In so many ways, they are what make the story worth telling.
So, from Hawaii, I’m feeling especially grateful for the years behind us, the life we’ve built, and the privilege of having more chapters still to write. Not because every day has been extraordinary, but because we’ve had the opportunity to share so many of them together.
And if there’s one thing I hope I never get too busy to appreciate, it’s this: there is something pretty extraordinary about an ordinary life shared with the right person.
Here’s to twenty years, the memories that brought us here, and all the beautiful, unexpected, ordinary days still ahead.
