I’ve got a pretty crazy story. To give you some of the highlights, I moved overseas when I was nine. My senior year in high school, I left home and began a mass series of moves that have taken me to six locations in three continents. I’ve been kicked out of high school twice, worked seven different jobs, traveled to thirteen countries, worked high-profile Muay Thai boxing events, lived in the ghetto of Malaysia, flown to Asia with a three week old baby, and eaten far more chocolate than is healthy. The love of my life is my husband of five years, with my three kids coming in close second.

Also, I’m twenty four years old. At eighteen, when I was first married, I had one other young married friend. She was twenty-one, which was 16.7% older than me, and I felt so alone in the young married world that I used to look for blogs by other young married people so I could feel some sense of camaraderie. Was there anyone else in the world who understood what it was like to be married less than a year after graduating high school? Did anyone know what it was like to be married to a man who had just graduated high school? (Let me tell you, it’s not the same as being married in your mid-twenties.) Sadly, as I Googled desperate phrases such as “teen marriage”, “married at 18”, and “young wife”, all I found was a few measly blog posts about twenty-three year old newlyweds. When you’re eighteen, twenty-three is not young.

About six months after our wedding, we found out we were expecting a child. Gulp. I volunteered at a crisis pregnancy center in California and had learned quite quickly that babies take a significant amount of commitment. As in my whole entire life for eighteen years, plus the rest of my life after that. Still, we were overjoyed, and four years later I am so thankful for this child and the two that have come since.

Now I stay at home with three spitfire kids–a four year old boy, my two year old daughter, and my currently three week old newborn peanut (also a son.) The intensity of the joy they bring me is rivaled only by the ridiculous intensity with which they make me want to pull my hair out on a daily basis.

Then there’s my husband. We celebrate five years this weekend, and every step has challenged me. I knew marriage wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but I was expecting a marathon or perhaps a particularly strenuous hike, not an all out fight through raging rivers, over mountainous crags and between cavernous trenches.

God performed a miracle and brought my husband and I together in ways I never dreamed possible. Our God is a God who fixes broken things and He made me whole first through Him and secondly through my husband, who knows me so well he refuses to get me ice cream and tea at the same time because he knows how particular I am about temperatures and if I drink the tea first the ice cream will melt, but if I eat the ice cream first, my tea may cool down from the temperature of the surface of the sun which would be wholly unacceptable. 

Young wives and young mothers, I feel you. This blog is for you. Sitting at home all day with a nursing baby or a cranky toddler is rough. Spending Friday night hashing out who has the do the dishes when you’ve both been busy all day instead of going out like everyone else your age gets old. Saturday mornings cooking pancakes together and tickling giggles out of the baby, sharing a life with the people you love most makes it all worth it. I’ve been to all those places and many more, and my life leaves me overflowing with joy. If you’re anything like me, this blog is for you. If you’re completely different, this blog is for you.

Come get to know me; I think we’ll make great friends.