Celebrating 20 Years of Marriage

Twenty years ago this week, my husband and I said our ‘I Do’s’ under a full moon on a Friday the 13th. 

When obligations to the army requires you to choose an unconventional day to get married, why not make it a good one. We couldn’t be like everyone else and get married on Valentine’s Day. I mean, who does that? 

Every year since then, we have celebrated our commitment to each other and the family we have made in each passing Friday the 13th… just because we can. 

When you have spent the majority of your adult life as a military family knowing it’s not IF, only when the next deployment is going to happen, you begin to find a reason to celebrate. 

This year, twenty years later, we celebrate. Not only for ourselves, but for our family. The ones near and far. The ones we hold near and dear to our hearts that are blood by DNA and by choice because they hold such a special place in our hearts. We celebrate because so many have helped us reach this milestone in our lives and in our marriage. There are ones who we still have the ability to pick up the phone and talk to.  We also have the loved ones who are no longer with us. These are the ones we can’t make more memories with and makes days like today even more special because we know what they have done for us as a couple and how they’ve made our relationship stronger. It is the things they have not only done for us, but what they have done for our children also.

Twenty years ago, I drove half way across the country listening to Savage Garden’s ‘I knew I Loved You Before I Met You’ being played repetitively on the radio. If the DJs only knew the truth behind the words they played in those moments and what we were about to do that would change our lives forever. 

This year, as we drove to the same location where we said those words that changed our lives, we listened together to different DJs playing repetitively Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect.’  

There is a lot to be said to knowing each other for 36 years, together for 24 years, and now married for 20. 

-Anonymous, Heroes Thanking Heroes Representative