In preparation for Justin’s 40th Birthday celebration a few months back, I had some fun digging through our family archives. I combed through both our digital and analog photo libraries to work on a few surprise projects for him to celebrate the milestone. I dug up quite a few old photos of the two of us together and was taken aback to realize we have been together since we were babies.
It’s crazy – I was eighteen when Justin and I met. Eighteen. I’ve told the story before, but Justin and I met over the summer in the year following my Freshman year of college. He was in town during a National Tour with his college a capella group (with Keith and Ryan, two of his best friends and now Choicelunch business partners), and we met through a mutual friend who invited me to their concert and introduced me to Justin at an after-party. The rest is now history.
Even though we met when I was eighteen, Justin and I have navigated so many twists and turns. Even before marriage and including dating in college, we stayed strong through the back-and-forth of a four-year long-distance relationship, and living in five different cities between us before finally coming together in the Bay Area. We had been together for seven years by the time we got married in 2005.
I love that Justin and I have grown up together. I love that he has been in my life now for a longer period of time than he hasn’t been in my life. I love that we have seen each other through so many phases of our youth, young adulthood, and now adulthood – from college and our young careers, to maturity and parenthood. I love that I remember very little about life without him. Life has surely given us our fair share of moments that have brought us to our knees, but I love that we have been together through it all.
Meeting the love of my life and fighting through years of long-distance dating (pre-Facetime), we faced some long odds. I’m convinced that weathering those storms only helped to better prepare us for married life with four kids, and I love that we only continue to get stronger as we mature. I know I wouldn’t have wished for those trials back then, but looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
