Today is my husband’s  26th birthday! Crazy enough, it happens to also be week 26 of this project, too! I love coincidences like that. And it works out well because the joy I have found in my marriage this week, is having that feeling like we know each other pretty well for our birthdays.

We’ve celebrated 5 birthdays together now, which is 10 birthdays total! Weird when you think about it in total numbers, right? That number of birthdays with 5 years between us, has given us enough time to try out a few different birthday options, such as surprise parties, family gatherings on the actual day of,  friend parties, just the two of us, lots of presents, or little presents, etc. And trying out these different celebratory methods has also given us a chance to share our preferences of what we actually like, haha. Not that we don’t like what each other does, but everyone has their ideal way of wanting to be celebrated, and sometimes it just takes trial and error to get to that point. And my joy is feeling like we are to that point. It’s a good feeling when you mostly know how to make your spouse feel special :)

There will still be surprises

We aren’t perfect at it, don’t get me wrong! Sometimes I forget what he has said he likes, and most of the time we flat out have to tell each other what we want to do to celebrate, but I’ve learned that’s OK. In some interesting way, it feels kind of comforting to know that we don’t have each other figured out 100% yet. I like knowing that there’s still going to be years where we surprise each other with something new, or maybe our preferences just change over the years, and that’s a nice surprise too.

I think a lot of times we get into these phases where we feel like we don’t know our spouse as well as we thought we did. As in you’re a little too surprised when you find out they like certain things that you thought they didn’t like. I’ve definitely felt this before, and I tend to feel really down on myself and my relationship when I think about it too much. So instead, this is me trying to NOT think about those times as much, and instead thoroughly enjoy moments like these :)

Happy birthday to this kid whose main birthday request was a box of Einstein bagels and LOTS of shmear :) Of which, he was so excited for!

P.S. I’m officially halfway through this project! So this coming week I’m going to be doing some reflection on how this project is coming along, if it’s making a difference and what that difference might be.

And keep in mind that YOU can also participate in this project too by sharing a joy YOU found in your marriage each week! Just use the #ajoyfulmarriage hashtag so we can see your joys too!

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