hope

 

* I didn't take this picture. *
I found it online somewhere, and then used some
super-rad photoshop actions to turn it into a
Polaroid and make it old looking.

 So, we're celebrating our anniversary early this year (so as to not conflict with the BNL concert in Anchorage...) and we're going two places. The first few nights, we'll back the truck up on the beach in Homer, and wake up to mountains at our toes. The next few nights, it may or may not look like the picture above...* We're going to Hope, AK - home to five restaurants and 318 people.

There's plenty of cheesy things that could be said about celebrating one's wedding anniversary in a town called Hope, and really, I think I'll take some of those things.

But first:
     We did not choose to celebrate there because of the town's name and / or any implication/inference it might have on our relationship. (Which wouldn't be a bad idea ... but that's not how we roll right now. So, the choice being made, I'll retrospectively extrapolate...)

Caveat out of the way...


This past year really has been marked by hope. (Unlike the first year...which was sort of anti-hope.) Both in our marriage, and in our individual lives and relationships with Christ. More hope than we've known in a long, long time, and in ways that seem so much more solid, more soul-anchoring, than in previous seasons. And it may or may not have come out of the fire of our first year of marriage. The absolute dependence on the person of Christ and the gift of God's grace to get up every morning and love each other, which felt soooo incredibly necessary a year ago, is still just as necessary (but oh, so, sooo much sweeter when we like each other). Our relationship is so much more free, so much more joy-filled, with the onus of its viability off our sinner-selves. To be able to receive one another as gifts, as blessings. (Which, we've wanted to do that since Day One, but haven't always been very good at.)

I'm positive that Year Three will look different than any of the lovely versions of it in my head, but I am hopeful. I am looking forward to a continuation of reverance, of stepping out in faith, of celebrating the Life and Person of Christ in our day-to-day lives.



One of the five restaurants.
Do I wish my life was fun and vintage?
Yes. Yes I do.



* I'm going to bring my ancient point-and-shoot, with the goal of turning them into cool Polaroids. I'm pretty sure we have zero pictures from Year Number Two, and the only post-wedding photos from Year One include the Hubs' never-to-be-seen-again comical mustache.

Here's to Year Three! * clink *