It’s time for part 2 of the newlywed linkup “From one year to beyond”…
You can read my post from last week here.
Today’s topic: The Hardest Moments of the First Year.

If we’re being honest, our first year has really not been that hard. I mean sure there have been tough moments. We aren’t perfect, and we do argue, but for the most part, being married hasn’t been a horrible adjustment. I think the fact that we dated for 6 years before we got married, we both lived on campus at Harding, and we went home to the same home town helped in that regard. We were already pretty used to each other even though we hadn’t technically lived together. We both have great, supporting families and friends. When we got married, we didn’t want for anything. The amount of bridal gifts we received was overwhelming. We knew where we were going after we got married. Pearson had been accepted to the Biophysics graduate program at OSU. I was going to keep my fantastic job with M3. We had no real worries about our future.

However, the biggest problem for me was…. Moving to OHIO! Hello!

I had lived in the south all my life. I grew up in Georgia and went to college in Arkansas. My family lives mostly in Georgia and Arkansas and the rest basically just live in Tennessee and Louisiana. That is both sides of my extended family. There is not one person that I know of related to me living above the Mason-Dixon line.

More Ohio memes here

Anyway, I was all worried about living here and having no country music or cowboy boots. I was wrong. Basically, the only difference was the weather, which I’ll admit was pretty tough to get used to.

But what was hard about moving here was the fact that our closest family is 600-some-odd miles away, and we hardly knew a soul here. When we first moved, church was awkward. We didn’t belong. We had both gone to the same church back home for so long that everyone knew us and our families. We had life-long friends there. It was home. It was comfortable. We left that far behind when we moved all the way to Ohio.

But we found a great church and from the outside looking in, there seemed to be so many people our age and in the same “stages of life” as us, but they were all friends already. We didn’t know whether to go to the college class {where there were freshmen-5 years younger than us} or the young adults class {where there were couples with kids in school}. We were in between. This was hard for me because I am not very outgoing and not good at making friends anyway, and frankly, I don’t like change. I liked my comfort zone and having my friends that already knew everything about me, but I knew I would feel alone if I didn’t make an effort to meet people. As the year went on, we made ourselves get involved and do things. Now we have great friends! They have seriously taken us in. It took a little while but it was worth it.

We love our church family and our friends. Life is a lot different from having my family live a few miles down the road or going to church with my grandma’s life long friends, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Starting over with your life as a new married couple is good in a lot of ways. We learned to lean on each other more than we would have with our family close by. We did fun couple things that we wouldn’t have done if we went out with our old friends every Friday night like we did before we were married. Looking back, I can definitely see God’s hand in this. I love everyone in my life here with all my heart. And I guess Ohio itself isn’t so bad after all.

This was the hardest adjustment for me by far, but here are some other less dramatic moments:

Messy living. I’ll admit, I am not the cleanest person in the world, but compared to Pearson {and most boys, I’m sure}, I am spic and span. There are times when I feel like I am literally following Pearson around the house cleaning up after him.

My communication. As I have said before, I am an introvert and would usually just prefer to keep things to myself. Pearson is the complete opposite. {By the way, according to Myers Briggs I am an ISFJ and Pearson is an ENTP. Exact opposites in every aspect}. It drives him crazy when I don’t immediately want to talk about problems or express to him what is bothering me. Sometimes Usually, I just want to think about it for a little while and not burden him with it.

Privacy. When we first got married, Pearson was so excited to live with me that he followed me everywhere. Everywhere. Even the bathroom. I couldn’t stand it. I told him I needed a little privacy and we eventually worked it out. That is part of the communication thing too.

So while there were some tough times in our first year, we just had to work through them and we are a stronger couple for it. And besides, the good certainly outweighs the bad.

Thanks for reading!