Marriage

Jacob and I met a little over five years ago at one of our mutual friend’s (Bryan) birthday party. I was about to leave the party when I saw a cute guy walk up. The only thing that happened that night was meeting each other and learning that he was also from my home town of Decatur, IL, and that he played guitar for a country singer, Riley Green, who I had not yet heard of. I left shortly after he arrived and we continued on with our lives.

I was single previous to moving to Nashville and Jacob had recently left a long term relationship. We both were at a point where we were good with being single for awhile. A few months went by, but the pull was definitely there between us. We followed each other on instagram, and that’s when we slid into each other’s DM’s - haha. I was on a July trip with my family in Florida when Jacob hit the “fire” emoji on one of my stories. Then we started “talking”. Although, I was hesitant to date anyone in the music industry. I had been with an unloyal cowboy/horse trainer for years in my 20s, and I even told my family when I moved to Nashville that I didn’t want to be with anyone in the music industry because I pictured them all as being unfaithful like what I had witnessed and experienced in the horse industry. Turns out there are a lot of really wonderful and professional men in the music industry, including my Jacob.

When Jacob and I started talking, I had just bought my first home in Nashville, and our mutual friend Bryan was going to rent a room from me. Jacob helped Bryan move in to my house, so we got to see each other quite a bit. One night Jacob was playing on Broadway and he texted me to see if I wanted to get dinner when he was done. He picked me up and we went to Pharmacy Burger in East Nashville. While we were sitting there, I felt it in my heart that I was going to marry him. Weird and really fast, I know! And then “She’s In Love With The Boy” by Trisha Yearwood started playing. You know the part… “She’s gonna marry that boy someday…”

Jacob took me on a proper date there shortly after our first dinner. We went to Park Cafe in West Nashville. After that night, we both kept getting confirmation in various ways to keep moving forward in our relationship. We both prayed about it, separately and together, which was awesome because neither of us had ever had that in a partner. And neither of us wanted anything that wasn’t God’s will.

Six months into dating, Jacob and I went to St. Louis to see Cody Johnson play. Little did I know that he would get down on one knee outside of one of my favorite restaurants in St. Louis with our family surrounding us. Jacob had also flown Riley’s photographer, Sam, into St. Louis to capture the moment. It was so sweet! And then Jacob and I went on to the concert together. The opener, Ian Munsick, gave us a congratulations shoutout before he played his song Long Haul. That is now our song and it played at our wedding.

Jacob and I wanted to have a different kind of wedding - not too much planning. So we made the plans to get married in Vegas at the church his parent’s got married at. We had Jacob’s youth pastor, Drew, marry us. And we only had a small group of our closest family and friends come along for the journey. My parent’s got me and Jacob a three level bungalow at the Cosmopolitan to stay in for the week, so we spent our days by the pool and cabana with our family and friends. After the wedding, we had a party at our bungalow. We had a time - we married a few days under a year from our first date! Then we had our honeymoon in Cabo at Le Blanc at a later date. Jacob and I decided to sell his house in Goodlettsville and move into mine when we got married.

We just had our four year wedding anniversary on June 27th. I am so grateful for him and he is so grateful for me. All in all, we are each other’s biggest fans - truly. I cheer him on with all of his dreams and work ventures, and he cheers me on with my work and new blog. But we have definitely had our fair share of disagreements and arguments. It’s been really cool to see how much we have learned and grown over the last several years. Touring life is not an easy one to navigate, but at this point we are currently living our best year yet of juggling it all.

Some of things we have really worked through and came together in throughout our marriage include: me not being a good communicator in the beginning, Jacob being controlling about certain things, me being hyper-independent and overly masculine at times, having different interests/hobbies/ways of living and us both taking time to put energy into understanding and sharing in the other persons interests, finding time for both of us to work on house projects since it can be hard with Jacob’s crazy schedule, giving each other space and grace with the re-entering when Jacob gets back from the road. For instance: he needs to ease back into real life and I need him to not throw his stuff all over the house that I cleaned all weekend. And finally, both of us softening and surrendering when we get bullheaded.

Jacob and I are both very competitive and each of us have let pride get in the way at different times. We can both be very intense when we think we are right…neither of us want to give up. The hardest part of having disagreements between us has been softening to recognize we aren’t always right. But we have learned that truly listening and being aware that “there are always two sides to the story” has been a game changer for us. We have both improved remarkably in communication and during disagreements. Pretty neat.

Jacob and I have had to surrender to certain narratives that we have both lived by for far too long. We have had to learn and trust that we are each different for a reason. Some of our differences need to be refined or removed… and some of them absolutely need to be celebrated. Jacob and I do some things differently and some things the same, but the point is…we round each other out. God knew what he was doing when he put us together. We have learned so much about each other and ourselves through marriage. I know we are both so grateful for that.

At the end of the day, we are both in agreement that God is first, our marriage is second, and everything else comes after that. We are both major creatives, dreamers, do-ers, and each other’s biggest fans. When he leaves each week for tour, we both can’t wait until he comes back home. He is truly my best friend.

This message below is a really good one by Dr. Caroline Leaf who is a Christian Neuroscientist:

“A healthy relationship will test you more than a toxic one. Because it won’t let you run. It holds up a mirror and says: Show up. Communicate. Grow together. Swallow your pride. It’s a repeated choice to stay and work at it together, even when it’s hard and ugly.”

I think it’s so important to note that marriage teaches us so much about these things that Dr. Leaf stated. Nobody is perfect from the get go…that is really unrealistic. Of course it’s important that values and morals align in the beginning - gotta have that spark too, of course. But there will always be testing and refining in relationships/marriage…that’s what produces the good fruit when we make the choices to listen, learn, and grow.

Just like our relationship with God.