Celebrating Our Five-Year Anniversary

This past Saturday, Kyle and I celebrated five full, beautiful years of being together. Five years of so much love, patience, and kindness, that I often look back and get lost in how much has happened.  We have been through so many amazing experiences and changes, all wrapped into the twists and turns of my favorite love story.

When I met Kyle, I was 17 and he was 19. I was finishing my last year of high school, while Kyle was preparing to start his first year of college. Although we were only 2 years apart, we were entering very different stages in our lives. And yet somehow, we found each other when I think we needed it most.

A lot of people saw a change in me after I met Kyle. I have always been a happy, positive person, but after getting out of a very rough relationship, I was taken-aback by his kindness. I had never met anyone like him, even to this day.

And as one year turned into two, we faced situations together that we never thought we would. We started making decisions that would shape who we became, and our unknown future together. We allowed ourselves to hope and dream and wish for something so much bigger than us. But what we didn’t realize was…

A journey was unfolding; one that we never imagined. The Army changed everything that we had originally “agreed to”. It changed the way we lived, the way we prayed, the way we dreamed. It changed all the little things, and in turn, the big things too.

Our promises turned into the only vows that an unmarried couple can make. And someday those vows will be made real, along with the future we have dreamed of. It’s true what they say: the journey is the destination.