Marriage is the best and hardest thing that can happen to a person in so many ways. It is both beautiful and difficult, a thing to be grown and cherished and nurtured whether you feel like it or are having a bad day. It teaches you lessons you never knew you had to learn - and sometimes you didn't want to learn them to begin with. Marriage has shown me a lot of things throughout the past 6 years, and one of those is my own tendency towards selfishness.

I never wanted to live alone. I moved straight out of my parents' house to a college dorm with a roommate, and from there I lived with other people right until Nathan and I got married. I liked it this way. I had no desire to be alone, knowing I would go a little crazy if I didn't have someone there to talk to or just hang out with throughout the day. Never having lived alone, and in a big family with three siblings, I always thought that sharing and selflessness was high on my list of life achievements...