An Ode to my Valentine

Daniel. He is my "sweet boy." I am honored to call him "mine" on October 4, 2014.

We finally have a date. After two years of being engaged as undergraduates, we finally have a date. There is an answer to the dreaded question, "So when's the wedding?"

For me, it was really hard being so young and having to answer questions like that. Apparently, it's the norm for sophomore college couples to announce an engagement, but never actually make it to a wedding in the end. Those questions were tough when it is apparent on so many of the people's faces who ask. Doubt.

Answering such questions to older, "more wiser" people is excruciating. Usually the response to our young engagement with no real set plan was something along the lines of this:

"But, you're so young! Wait to get married!" or "Finish what you want to do first, then worry about marriage." or "You're young, you have a lot of learning to do before you get married."

There's that doubt thing again. Doubt that a young marriage will work. Doubt when someone else's experiences ended in failure.

There's a pattern to these responses. Why is it that all of these particular responses of doubt often come from people with failed relationships? These people expect nothing but failure. People whose relationships don't last. People whose marriages did end, oftentimes more than once. If you expect failure, you will most often times receive failure.

A negative response isn't the response we've always received though. You see, like I said, there's a pattern to the responses we get. It seems that people whose relationships or marriages haven't ended in failure have been the ones to encourage us to get married young. I once met a man who asked me about Daniel and I. Afterwards I asked him about his relationship with his wife of 64 years. His answer was this:

"Yes, I was young. I've done a lot and seen a lot, but I never did it alone. All of my favorite memories are with Mary."

So here's to marriage and the confidence in it's success.

Two years after getting engaged...officially planning our wedding, even more in love and excited about getting married than we've ever been.

Here's to my sweet boy and the life we'll build together.

p.s. When did 21 become too young to marry anyways?