Mr. and Mrs. Misfit were married!
It's funny looking back. We were so young. We were so full of hope for so many things about which, now, we are not; time has made us cynical, not without cause. On the other hand, so many of the world's challenges seemed near impossible then, which now seem easy; and we faced many difficulties in our relationship and new marriage at which, now, we laugh.
Old married people told us, when we were engaged, that the love we felt as a young couple newly smitten with one another would change - but it would improve. It seemed damning with faint praise, and I wonder whether that isn't how they meant it. If they did, they were wrong. There are qualitative differences between initial infatuation and an enduring love; but each day we love each other more, and for all I've heard his jokes, and he knows my crazy family stories, and he may move out if I lick my fingers after eating Cheetos again, and I plot frequently to destroy his laptop so that he can't use it in bed - the same magic that first drew us to one another persists, alongside something more powerful than we knew then, and could never have expected.
Life is rarely what we expect of it, nor what we hope; and at the wise old age of twenty-eight, I am coming to understand what is signified by the "vale of tears." But amid our many trials come profound blessings, and for us, fortunate souls that we are, this vocation is one of them.
