Thank you for building this life with me—one filled with chaos + happiness

To my love,

I’m so happy. With you, with our children—with our lives. I wanted to take a second out of the busyness of everything and acknowledge that. Things aren’t “perfect”—but they never will be someone else’s definition of perfect, will they? Maybe “perfection” isn’t what we’re chasing anyway.

Maybe it’s happiness. Pure, uninhibited, imperfect happiness. Our happiness.

Remember when we first fell in love? I couldn’t even contain how happy I was. I was so head over heels I was honestly probably definitely annoying to be around. I would talk to anyone I could about you. We would find each other at a party, and when we’d lock eyes across the room, my heart would freak out.

We were happy then.

Remember when we found our first apartment together? We were recently engaged and it felt like it was all happening: Life had begun. We scrounged up hand-me-down furniture and dishes from everyone we knew, we bought a TV (our first big purchase together), we merged both of our most adult-like decorations from college and tried to make it our own.

We were happy then.

Remember our wedding day? All our friends and family came to celebrate with us—to celebrate this love we found. It was overwhelming in every sense of the word. I was overwhelmed with people caring enough to take the time to come, I was overwhelmed with love for you, I was overwhelmed with having the BEST time dancing the night away looking around at the smiles on people’s faces—on your face.

We were happy then.

Remember when I told you I was pregnant? I was a little scared, definitely nervous. I didn’t know what you’d say. Getting pregnant wasn’t really in “the plans” yet… but how could I have doubted you? You were surprised, that’s for sure! ( ) and you were also really happy. You helped me soak in the excitement rather than the fears. And that shared happiness of knowing we created life together? Well that feeling was pretty wild, wasn’t it?

We were happy then.

Remember when we bought our house? We were so proud of ourselves. I still am. Our house isn’t flashy, and isn’t very big—but it’s our place, our safe space. We may have painted the walls and fixed some things here and there to make it more aesthetically pleasing, but that’s nothing compared to the other work we’ve done. We’ve poured our hearts and souls into these walls—with each baby we’ve brought home, with each meltdown turned heart-to-heart (sometimes with the kids, sometimes with each other), with each parenting win and fail—we have made this house a home.

We were happy then.

And now, here we are today with a million things to do, a thousand projects to work on, a hundred dreams to catch, about fifty loads of laundry, at least five diapers to change (today), three children, two jobs, one mortgage, and an endless amount of love.

We are happy now.

So I wanted to stop for a second. Because today you woke up before the sun and headed off to work. Because my day will fly by with the gazillion things I need to do between work and the kids. Because you’ll come home exhausted, to me, your exhausted wife and we’ll just want to crash on the couch and then we’ll peel our exhausted selves off the couch and force ourselves to get into bed. Because we’ll try for a conversation but will need to tend to a crying child who woke up.

Because life is happening. All the time.

So I wanted to stop and tell you how happy I am. We’ll never have “perfect”, but I don’t care. I don’t need that. I need you. Our lives and our love won’t look like anyone else’s, and I don’t care about that either. What I care about is you. What I care about is our family. What I care about is being happy.

It’s too easy to get sucked into the worries, the fears, the chaos. It’s too easy to complain and fret and rush. Motherhood is completely overwhelming.

But I don’t want to forget how happy I am. How happy we are.

It’s kind of nice to pause the day-to-day shuffle and name our feelings every once in a while. Right now my mind is running wild (and so are our kids). My heart is full (and so is the laundry pile). And my spirit is energetic (but that might be the coffee…)

And my soul is happy. (Really, truly happy.)

You might also like:

• Dear husband: One day, we’ll miss all of this
• Marriage is: Choosing each other again and again (and again)
• Let’s not wait until the kids are grown to make time for us