do you love me?

We've recently heard news about 2 young couples we know heading towards divorce. This news leads us to talk about how crazy it is that people could get married and be in love and then a few years later decide divorce is the best option. It doesn't make sense to us now, and I hope it never will.

A book I'm reading details all the craziness that children bring to a marriage. It riddles off facts about the frequency of divorce, unhappiness, separate lives, etc. Our relationship has already changed a lot since Ellie has come into our lives. We spend a lot more time dividing responsibilities instead of tackling everything together. We've seen each other doing and talking about more unattractive things and had a lot less time to try to look attractive for each other. Our kisses and highest energies are spent entertaining our baby girl instead of each other.

It's times when I'm overwhelmed by our messy house, lack of sleep, fast-food dinners, too few showers, and stained clothes that I ask David for some confirmation:

Despite everything that could possibly be considered bad right now, do you love me? Are you still with me?

We haven't made a conscious effort to keep our marriage happy or intact, but I don't doubt that we still love each other more today than we did a year ago. I think subconsciously I've realized that it's in these messy bits that our love seems truest and grows even stronger. I want to make sure David sees that, too. I've taken to confirming our love for Ellie too since she can't point it out to us yet, and in the middle of a sleepless night or rough morning it's important to remember. If she could she would say something like:

Even when I poop on, puke on, and scream at you, you still love me more than anything else in the whole wide world.

I'm sitting here trying to come up with a conclusion for this post, but just decided there isn't one. I wanted to share how happy I am with our life and our family and it's fitting that there's no neat conclusion because it's all kind of a mess. I'm happy enough to know that we're in all of this together and everyday can only get better. For true life.