A couple of weeks ago, one reader commented that I haven’t been focusing enough on the joys of marriage in my blog. So, I decided to come up with a list of some of the joys of my marriage to Daniel. I love easy tasks, and this certainly was one! In no particular order, here you go:

— Being able to see each other every single day of every single week
— Having my best friend around all the time, so that I can share everything with him without having to pick up the phone
— Sharing our days in person rather than over the phone

–Doing routine grocery shopping together and making meals for each other in our very own kitchen
–Being called “Mrs. Hammond” by new people that I meet or speak to on the phone

–Calling Daniel “my husband” and having Daniel introduce me as his wife
–Continuing to work on our home together and knowing the satisfaction of seeing it finished
–Learning more about each other every day, even though we dated for nearly five years before we got married

— Folding each other’s laundry (although folding laundry itself is not exactly a joy, for now it’s a newlywed joy to be folding Daniel’s socks and know that this house is where they belong)
— Watching movies we both love on the couch on a Friday night
— Looking forward to understanding what it will mean to love each other even more than we do today
— Planning for the future, imagining what our lives and our family will be like

— Knowing that we are already on our chosen path of serving God, and that our most important decision has already been made and our vocation has begun
— Reading and praying together every night before we go to bed
— Being silly and laughing hysterically when we are alone, knowing that we are free to be so completely ourselves, more than we can ever be with anyone else
— Being held in the arms of the one I love as I fall asleep, and the feeling of peace that comes in knowing that there is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be

— Feeling like I am the luckiest girl in the world to have such a good man who loves me so much
— Praying that God teach me how to love my husband better, and believing that, little by little, He will
— Seeing ourselves five years ago in light of the man and woman we are today, realizing how much we have both grown in every aspect of our lives, and knowing that as we grew, we grew together
— Looking back over our memories of the past five years since Daniel and I began dating (beginning with the story Daniel told you last week) and seeing God’s hand in it all
— Hearing songs like this one and getting chills (like I did in the car the other day) because I know exactly what the artist (in this case Martina McBride) means:

I have been blessed
and I feel like I’ve found my way
I thank God for all I’ve been given
at the end of every day
I have been blessed
with so much more than I deserve
To be here with the one
that loves me
To love him so much it hurts
I have been blessed

What are some of the joys in your marriages? I would love to hear them, and I’m sure others would, too.