The elephant in the room.

What a crazy 3 weeks of engagement we've had!

In a matter of 21 days, we've both wrapped up our school semester, made arrangements for the wedding and I was in Vegas for 4 days. I JUST got over the cold from hell. 6 days of sneezing, coughing, the works. Now summer is in full swing and it'll be a busy one for both of us full of work, wedding planning, vacation and before we know it it'll be September again.

Tonight, I'm dealing with the reality of my life at this point in time. While it is so exciting to start figuring out the details of the big day I've been confronted with the elephant in the room. This isn't something small - it's something big I've dealt with for several years. My weight.

When I met Cameron back in 2004, I was a bit smaller than I am these days. In fact, I hate admitting it but I will.. since the beginning of our relationship I've gained 80 pounds. While I would love to blame it on everything under the sun - the biggest and main problem was my bad choices. Of course, I've made attempts to lose weight. I've had gym memberships, joined weight watchers, done research, but in the end I've always found an excuse, a new explanation for my choices and gave up. Through high school and even now in college a part of me always thought I could get away with it because I'm young and I thought the weight will come off eventually. With our recent engagement and the end of undergrad rapidly approaching, my "youth" is quickly coming to a halt. What other choices do I have at this point? Only one, get healthier. It's really time to stop being selfish because this impacts everyone around me. I want to be able to wear the dress of my choosing at our wedding. I want to be able to chase my kids around one day. I want to do things I'm making it harder to do everyday with my unhealthy lifestyle.

So as of today, May 28, 2011 - I've decided it's time to do life. Join me as I tackle my 80 pound goal. It's now or never.

The grass is greener where you water it.

A great way to start this blog if you haven't heard yet is to announce.. WE'RE ENGAGED!

It's amazing how many people reappear in your life once news like this comes out. We've received a flood of phone calls, text messages and most importantly Facebook posts. Common questions like, "When's the big day!?" and "How did he do it?" are asked over and over. This doesn't surprise me, but for those who don't know - Cameron and I have actually been talking about marriage since last July. 

I'm no fool. I realize there is a negative connotation of marriage these days. The divorce rate is at 50% and growing in this country. When Bruno Mars releases a song about spontaneously marrying a girl with the lyrics "who cares if we're trashed, got a pocket full of cash we can blow, shots of patron and it's on girl" - how can marriage actually be taken seriously? No one wants to watch stories of successful marriages rooted in Christ. Rather, dysfunction and infidelity is what sells. There are segments of Shortest Celebrity Marriages, but very rarely do we hear of celebrity couples such as Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, who will celebrate 15 years of marriage this October. 

Cameron and I, from childhood, didn't necessarily have the best view of marriage. Both of us have divorced parents and I've witnessed more broken marriages than functioning ones throughout my life. Until I became a Christian, I never understood what marriage actually stood for. I saw relationships as disorganized chapters rather than a set of steps. To me it made sense to get together, move in, have kids, get married or don't. There was a reoccurring argument between Cameron and I about living together before we were married. I was all for it while Cameron always stood his ground for being against it. God has really turned my heart on this topic and I completely understand now why he has always felt this way.

Great Lakes, along with many other subjects, has always been amazing and realistic about marriage. Every year, we spend about a month on a series about marriage. One line that always sticks with me is "The grass isn't greener on the other side - the grass is greener where you water it." Cameron and I have been together since we were 15 and through high school and our first years of college - this was something I could really relate to. The thought "what if (fill in the blank)" crossed my mind. As humans, it's natural to believe there must be a better life waiting for us out there somewhere. Truthfully, Cameron and I have worked up until this point not because of some miracle, but rather the work we put into our relationship. Even though I've painted these pictures in my head of alternate scenarios of my life - I've never felt that I'm settling. We've both made our mistakes in this relationship, no doubt. We've said things we shouldn't have said, got into fights that didn't make any sense from start to finish and couldn't let go of the past and while these situations are nowhere near being over with - the harder we work at our relationship we find that these instances are less frequent and aren't as drawn out as they once were.

I'm not for one second being ignorant about marriage. I realize it's really easy to say these things now because I'm only engaged, but I do believe the preparation of our marriage is going to be just as important as life during marriage. Behind the scenes, Cameron and I have had several hard conversations about topics we know we'd have to tackle during marriage. Many of these have been on going for months and while there's no way we'll have it all figured out before marriage (or ever), we're being very deliberate about our vision, expectations and goals we have for our life once we're married. 

At this point in time, we've had a number of people that are willing to help with "whatever we need". Right now, Cameron and I need prayers for this new chapter of our lives. We don't want to become another statistic. We hope that the line of divorce is drawn here and we can become examples for our kids one day. 

"Love is a shelter in a raging storm; Love is a peace in a middle of a war, and if we try to leave may God send angels to guard the door.

No, love is not a fight, but is something worth fighting for."

-Warren Barfield