I typically loathe routine. The same thing again and again makes me lose my mind a little. I even rebel against my own plans. For example I can make a to-do list for the day and then say "psshh! You can't tell me what to do. I'm not doing laundry today, today I'm watching Netflix". You see, I thrive in the last minute, and I am in love with spontaneity. Give me a spur of the moment coffee date, not a lunch date planned months in advance.

That being said...there is something comforting about routine, something grounding about familiarity. There's nothing and no one I am more familiar with than my husband Jessie, who I've been married to for 17 years as of today!

Being familiar with my husband goes beyond knowing how he takes his coffee. (It's black by the way, just like mine). What I mean is, I can spot him in a sea of surfers just by the way he moves from paddling out to sitting on his surfboard. From across a crowded room I can find him by the way he crosses his arms and gently pushes his shoulders back, then lifts one arm to his chin when he's intently listening. I know that whenever I'm away, even if it's just a weekend, I'll get a text from him telling me he misses me. When I place my hand on his knee in the car, he'll always cover it with his hand. These little bits of predictability bring little hugs of comfort and contentment.

This morning we were a tad jet lagged from a Costa Rican family vacation. So we got up early and headed to our favorite little coffee shop to steal a few moments before the day officially started. We sat and talked and laughed, took a selfie and shared a kiss and an "I love you" or two. We talked about how it's taken us this long to get past accepting our differences and graduate to celebrating them.

So here's to 17 years of finding comfort in the familiar. Here's to having fought for hope when there seemed to be none and being generous with forgiveness when it didn't come easy. Here's to loving the routine when escape seems tempting, and to embracing the next 17 years that God has planned that we can't even begin to imagine!