A few nights ago, Jake and I climbed into bed only to realize the monitor in Sawyer’s room had gotten flipped off earlier in the day.

Now, this is pretty boring backstory, but it’s worth noting that said monitor is mounted in the back corner of the crib. And, it would be super easy to reach over the top of the crib to push the power button if Sawyer didn’t insist on sleeping, instead, in the pack n’ play which is set up right next to the crib. Really, the only way to get a hand on the monitor (while the baby sleeps) is to climb stealthily into the crib.

Jake: “How am I supposed to turn it back on without waking him up?”
Me: “I don’t know.”

*Three minutes pass*

Jake: I used a lighter and a broomstick.

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It’s a little known fact that the summer before Jake and I started dating, we wrote letters to each other while he was in Kansas and I was in Iowa. We exchanged about a letter a week as, really, our only means of communication because Jake didn’t have a cell phone at the time and I wasn’t too keen on calling his home phone where the majority of his brothers (who sound just like him) also lived.

Anyway, as I’ve been thinking about our ninth wedding anniversary, one paragraph from the last letter Jake wrote me that summer (dated 7/29/06) keeps coming to mind:

As the summer draws near its end, I couldn’t help but think of my summer as a whole. I find it interesting that a girl like you and a guy like me have been so faithfully writing each other, and furthermore, enjoying each other’s letters when in reality we don’t seem to have that much in common. I am a guy from the boonies who loves excitement, thrill, and pushing the limit, while (although you may object) I understand you to be a safe, down-to-earth, thrill avoider (note: he underlined “avoider” three times) who would just as soon stay in Des Moines, Iowa for the rest of your life. Is it possible that a mutual faith and similar Biblical values are enough to allow such a relationship between two seemingly opposite people to progress?

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So, did anyone want to guess which one of us is the lighter and which one of us is the broomstick in this particular metaphor?

Jake and I are the unlikeliest of pairs.

Yet, together, I’ve seen us accomplish a lot of good and important things (you know, like turning monitors back on and stuff) in the nine years we have been married.

Furthermore, I can’t help but notice that so many of the things we have done together are things that a broomstick would never have accomplished without the initial spark of a lighter.

We’ve still got (and always will have) a lot of growing to do. We don’t have a perfect marriage by any means.

But we do have a mutual faith and similar Biblical values, and, while that’s certainly not all it takes to make a marriage work, I really believe those lenses have tethered us to the things that are lasting and have given us common goals with each passing year of our marriage.

The metaphor, after all, isn’t really about the lighter and the broomstick as individual units. It’s about how, united, they worked together for the good of someone else.

It’s about purpose.

And, in year nine, more than anything, I’m thankful to be married to a man who shares a similar vision as to what exactly our purpose is.

A man who lights a fire under my feet and continually pushes me toward our common goals. Toward the good of other people.

And, on the cusp of a decade, that feels pretty good.

You know what else feels good? I didn’t live in Des Moines, Iowa my entire life, so take that 2006 Jake.