My Better Half.

So, Double Feature, as promised.

I've been married three years today. That's longer than almost anything I've done. I've held jobs for a year before, but not much longer. My LDS Mission was two years. I only was attending a "High School" for three years, and even that kicked me out during the summers. I've technically been in college longer, but that's not by much. But today marks three years of Marriage.

I live in an LDS congregation (ward) which is composed entirely of young married couples with children under the age of three. Frequently, we have people move in and say things like "We've been married for two months now, so we're really getting settled." or "We got married Wednesday." and then they have like, deer in the headlights eyes.

I know I have many friends and a couple people who may stumble across this who go, "Three years! Ha! That's nothing!" To them I say, "That's nice, but hush."

I want to talk about what has made my marriage work for three years.

Let me start by saying I was attracted to my wife long before that. When I was a senior and she was a freshman in High School I cat-called her. When her sister wrote me a letter as a missionary, I asked for her younger (and cuter in my mind) sister to write me. And as I got to know her, she was funny, and witty, and had good spelling. So I remember telling my missionary companion that I could see myself marrying someone like her. But not her of course. Becuase, you know, that'd be silly. Marrying someone right out of high school? Within a year of being home? Preposterous.

Well, then I made the choice to ask Natalie out, and there was no going back at that point. You see, once you start dating someone who really enjoys spending time with you, and happens to be good at, you know, everything, you may just find yourself raising a family with them. I loved, and still do, love bragging on Natalie. She's a very good dancer. She's incredibly smart, was the top of her graduating class, and has only gotten two A- grades in her whole life (including college now). She's a won competitions for public speaking and attended nationally sanctioned events. She is a good writer as she's come to discover through our marriage, but which I knew as a missionary. She is incredibly musically gifted, playing organ, piano, viola and violin. She's played around with a guitar and wants to learn Mandolin too. I mean, add to the fact that she's gorgeous, and you can see why people frequently told me I needed to "hurry up and marry that girl." Sometimes that's people being nosy or pushy. In my case it was, "Quick! Before she realizes there's life outside of high school!"

Well, I love those things about Natalie, and many more that I've learned through our marriage, but there's one quality that really has sealed the deal for me. It's the thing that Natalie is best at, and what makes her so good at so many things.

Natalie is a Finisher.

I have many weaknesses. Among them, probably my greatest is that I often put things off, sometimes indefinitely. Natalie has helped me to see the things that I can accomplish. She has done so much in that way through her life that it's easy to lean on her. Being married presents a lot of challenges. There are so many times that it'd be easier to run away and hide. To not work the extra hours to pay the rent. To not keep track of the budget. To not stick to our plans. To not finish school and just live life as we do now, which would be fine, but not as good as it could be. Natalie makes things happen. Natalie works hard, and she influences me to do the same. She makes sure things we commit to happen.

Most of all, she's committed to me. Through thick and thin, through good and bad. Even though discouragement, and disagreement and disappointment happen in life, Natalie has pushed through and been my biggest support. None of the good things have happened to or for me in the last three years happen without her. Natalie has helped me to stick to things longer. She's helped me work and make sacrifices I wouldn't or couldn't make alone.

Becuase of Natalie, things get done. Maybe this isn't the most romantic thing in the world, but it's the thing that enables the romantic things to still happen. It's awful hard to take time to blog when you don't have someone who has helped you stay on task. She hates when I'm busy, but she sacrifces so much of what she wants for me. I love her and am in her debt forever.

Hope the next 1,000 days are even better than the first 1,000. :)

Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;

Beginners are many, but enders are few.

Honor, power, place and praise

Will always come to the one who stays.

Stick to your task ’til it sticks to you;

Bend at it, sweat at it, smile at it, too;

For out of the bend and the sweat and the smile

Will come life’s victories after a while.

—Author Unknown

This'll Just Take a Minute

It happens to all of us. The best laid plans have a tendency to cause themselves to fall through. Today, it started to happen, and then it miraculously became a much, much better day.

But let's rewind for a minute. Let me first just apologize that it's taken 454 days to post again. It's one of my goals this year to do at least one a month, and while I failed in January, you're getting a double feature today. I could blame that on a lot of things, like an increasingly heavy work and school load, or my fatal procrastination, or having a son for seven of those months (as of this Sunday), or what have you. What I cannot blame it on is a lack of source material. In addition to the many, many, many, many wonderful friends that I have had for the years before I ever began blogging about them, I have made a bevy of incredible friends this year. Friends that are the kinds of friends that it's hard to imagine life before they were my friends. Maybe we were friends in Heaven before this life, too. Who knows.

That said, let me get to my friend today.

You know how in school or work or church or your yoga class there are a couple of people that you know, and that you've talked to before, but you never really think to call them? I mean, they don't "LIKE" all of your facebook posts, and they may not be following you on Instagram, and they're not one of the three people you call regularly, so you're like, "Oh yeah, so-and-so? Such a nice person. Don't know 'em very well, but totally nice." Then after you see them you move on and think about other things until they're really not present in your mind anymore? Maybe I (and this blog) are that person for you.

That person for me is someone we'll just call Maybe. Maybe was in my Chinese class over the summer. I knew her because in our weekly dialogues we would make up skits about what a heart-breaker Maybe was. It was especially funny because she was in on them, and because she's a nice person and very quiet. Not the kind of person you see breaking hearts every day. Not that she's not a pretty person -- she is. Just that she's the person that, at least for me, I'd pass in the hall and think "What a nice person!" and move on with my day, you know?

Well, back to this morning. I overbooked myself, as sometimes I do, and it's my anniversary, and I have a son who needs watching while my wife's at work and I run to my job that's about half an hour away at a school up the Canyon. I was caught in a pickle. My parents were busy all day. My siblings were in school. I'd just asked my in-laws to watch jack two of the last five days. My usual baby sitter had a study group (another wonderful person you should hear all about.) So I did what any desperate person does.

"Scott Savage updated his status: 'I'm in a bit of a pickle. Could anyone watch Jack today from about 12:30 to 2:30?"

I hop in the shower hoping someone will hear my pleas.

I get out to see a notification on my phone from Maybe. It takes me a minute to process who Maybe is, and she says, "If you still need help, I'd love to watch Jack, here's my number!"

To you parents, if someone posts within 5 minutes of you begging for help over the internet and says, "If you still need help..." how hard are you laughing at the thought that you've suddenly been swamped with irrefutable offers? So I say, "Maybe, you're an all-star. I'd LOVE the help." And we arrange for me to pick her up between my morning job and my afternoon job. Awesome.

So I pick up Maybe at the appointed hour, and she and I begin to catch up a little bit. I learn that Maybe is hoping to travel to China to study more this year because Maybe is conversationally fluent in both Cantonese and Mandarin. Maybe studies linguistcs and her final senior project is to make up a language based on Tolkien. So, she decides to be true to the books, and she's making up the language of the wives of the Ents. Which is among the coolest and semi-geekiest things I've heard in a while. She also is doing research with a professor that she asked me to help with and offered to get me paid for. So, I mean, cool right?

Then I take her and baby Jack and drop them off and race off to my job. I come home to find a happy, smiling baby who has been changed and fed, and Maybe offers to just walk home since my son is content and she lives close. She also informs me that she'd love to be asked if we need help in the future. I appreciated that, but I also appreciated that when I walked into my kitchen for lunch, she'd done my dishes. I mean, really. It was kind of just too much, you know?

Some might read this and go, "What a mysoginist, promoting a woman because she cleans and watches children." On the one hand, that's totally true. On the other hand, I think it's more of a reflection of a truly humble person. A person who is looking to do more than is asked. A person who is genuinely kind and concerned. A person who, in spite of her very obviously pressing duties and responsiblities, which far outweigh cleaning poopy babies and dishes, took the time to do something she offered to do very well.

I've been blessed with many good babysitters for my son. The village that it's taking to raise him is huge. He's been very fortunate to have such a big group of people who love and care for him. This isn't about that though. This is just about someone who sometimes passes you in the hallways with a very genuine smile, and takes two hours out of her life to make yours better.

I mean, who doesn't want that in their lives, you know?