There’s a social media challenge making its way around the interwebs called the #loveyourspouse challenge. For 7 days you’re supposed to post pictures with your spouse and tag someone else who is married to keep the celebration of love going.

I originally went into this with the idea that I’d post fun pictures with my spouse and try to tell a short story… something simple, cute, and light hearted. The whole idea is to shed light on healthy marriages, and while I’m ALL FOR THAT, it’s just not real. I can’t honestly post cute photos with witty captions all week and call that a healthy marriage. I started burning out after day 3 (which I've noticed most other people have as well). That's probably because after three days of saying how awesome your spouse is, you kind of want to roll you eyes. Marriage isn’t a perfectly filtered photo with perfectly written content.

Sometimes marriage is freaking hard, and downright messy! Don't get me wrong, Shay and I love each other every day, but there are definitely days when we don't like each other much.
 

But no one ever wants to say that out loud for the whole world to hear. 
 

I’m not saying we should broadcast all of our ups and downs in marriage, or in life for that matter. Certainly, there are both positive and negative things that are meant to stay sacred. I guess what I’m trying to say is, to really know what a healthy marriage is, you have to know it pretty intimately. Maybe it’s the example your parents set for you or a close friend who shares their highs and lows. Either way, we definitely can’t get a true picture of a healthy marriage from acquaintances on the internet.

With that said, here’s my last photo for this challenge. 

This is photo of me and Shay riding a bike at Tour de Fat (my favorite yearly festival)! This bike was a CHALLENGE to figure out. We were facing opposite directions, so naturally we wanted to push in our own direction and drag the other one with us. But that wouldn't work, because then we wouldn’t get anywhere, and we’d just fall over. In order for it to work, one person has to pedal backwards to help push the other person forward.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Marriage can be like trying to operate this crazy bike. You can't be off doing your own thing. You have to constantly work together and have good communication in order to keep moving forward in the same direction.