The One Thing Happy Couples Always Remember

Church was over for the day, and the halls were filled with the usual mass exodus of little boys in clip-on ties and girls running with their tulle underskirts flapping behind them.

Phillip and I picked up our two little girls from their Sunday School classes and carried them to the car. We buckled them into their car seats and turned the key in the ignition — and nothing happened.

That's when I remembered I'd left the lights on.

I felt pretty bad about it, even though in the grand scheme of things (or even in a minor scheme of things) it wasn't a big deal. Mentally kicking myself, I told Phillip it was my fault.

Stepping out of the car and back into the parking lot, he flagged down a man nearby and said, "Hey, do you happen to have jumper cables? We left the lights on and our battery died."

Instead of throwing me under the bus in even the smallest way, Phillip assumed half the responsibility for my mistake without even thinking about it, saying "we left the lights on" instead of "my wife left the lights on."

I doubt he'd even remember that day if I asked him, but that was when it hit me with full force: we are a team.

When you're two starry-eyed 20-somethings planning your future together, you really have no idea how much you're going to become a team. Or much you're going to need to be one to make it through whatever lies ahead.

Being a team looks different for every couple, because every couple is its own unique mix of personalities, quirks, habits, needs, and strengths.

For us it means that on road trips, Phillip drives while I'm in charge of keeping the kids alive. Because I fall asleep at the wheel.

And since I'm more okay than he is with disrupted sleep, I get up with babies in the night. But he gets up with the older kids in the morning and gets them off to school while I sleep in.

And when we go on vacation, it's my job to give him a list of everything we need and he somehow gathers it up and makes it all fit in the car.

Today's our 14th anniversary, which means it's been fourteen years of sharing diaper duty and planning birthday parties and disciplining our kids and going to elementary school art shows together. We've supported each other through college, moving, having babies (me,) and a kidney stone (him.) We've tag-teamed bedtimes and school pickups and rides to soccer practice.

People see my 6 amazing kids and the fact that I hold down a church calling, write a blog, and even shower most days and they ask me, "How do you do it?"

And truthfully, I don't really know. I'm just pretty sure I couldn't if I didn't have such a great teammate.

I feel like I should have accumulated more wisdom than that by now, like after 14 years I should have cracked the formula for a good marriage and can now pass it on to others like the secret recipe for cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster.

But I suppose my best marriage advice is this: remember that you're a team.

Also, carry jumper cables in your trunk. You never know when you're going to need them.

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