TBD #1 - The Beginning

To be determined. (Typed by my lovely husband, Justin…My commentary will be in pink throughout this series, and his commentary while I type will be in blue.)

As Miriam and I were struggling with a title for this blog, the idea of calling it TBD came to mind. To be determined. I feel like TBD is a good reminder of how we’ve gone through life. Let us explain.

Questions such as, will I pass this math test? Will I succeed in life? Will I go to college? What degree will I pursue? Will I get hired at this job? Who will my wife be? Will we have a successful marriage? Will we have children? Will we leave behind a legacy? Who will die first? When will our first fight be? When will my cats die? Will I be remembered when I’m gone? Will anyone even read this blog?

Who am I? What is my identity in Christ? When will I meet my future husband? Is he stuck in a tree? How will I raise my kids? Am I making a difference? What is my calling? How can I truly show love and respect to my husband? What will I pass down to future generations?

All of these, and so many more, were at the time, and still are to be determined.

I’ve lived my life with the idea that I have an abundant amount of free-will. I have always believed that the choices I make will largely make up a majority of what happens to me. My choices will decide how well I do, who I meet, how I grow, whether I succeed, and how I will be remembered. Despite all this, I still believe there is a great amount of chance, influence, and Acts of God that make up my life.

Ditto.

Miriam and I attended a marriage conference two weekends ago. While there, I had the brilliant idea to start a couples blog detailing our lives. Or more so… documenting what our current selves are going through, so our future selves can laugh at it and remember. This idea also was based on hoping to bring people some comfort in knowing they don’t have to have it all together, and that there are solutions to most problems.

We had talked about our desire to have more “togetherness” a few different times and in a few different ways. Even though we had already committed to a life together, it still seemed like we were going in our own directions without any goals that would bring us together. As soon as Justin shared with me his thoughts towards blogging together it made me excited to see the opportunity to be able to build our marriage, grow in our faith, and encourage each other to not stay in the same place. We’ve always said that we’re a team, and here was a means for us to continue growing our team-ness.

One could maybe argue this nudging was from God, or maybe it was a combination of an infinite amount of factors already, like us both having blogs, me wanting to share my thoughts and opinions with the world, and my desire to have a common project to work on with my wife. Whatever it was that brought it to mind, it was still to be determined whether I would tell Miriam about it. And even more so whether she would go for it. And then even more so whether we would follow through with it.

So you see, it’s both. I believe life is a combination of our external influences that we then choose to interpret and act upon by our internal selves. This is the beginning. The beginning of us, a 134 day married couple. We will document the messy, the uncomfortable, the amazing, and the failures. You’ll get to read about romance and tragedy, forgiveness and grace, and laughter and tears.

And oh boy there’s a lot of tears. I mean laughter, lots of laughter. Also, this sounds like a trailer for an epic cheeseball movie, but I guess that’s pretty accurate… (cue “Our Story” video).

We hope you’ll join us next week, as we dive into “How to Not Treat Your Wife Like a Checklist”, and Miriam’s post “How to Get Off His Checklist.”