Guest Post! The Christian Wife Life-Being a Newlywed

Hello Brandon & Amanda Story readers! I am honored to be here on her blog today. :) She is one of my favorites and I wish she lived right down the road instead of another state!

My name is Ashley Shelley and I blog over at The Christian Wife Life. I love to write about marriage, relationships, random life happenings, and most importantly the reason I live - our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

I was going to say that I'm a newlywed, but I don't know if that's true anymore. I guess I should ask Amanda since we got married a couple months apart. What classifies a newlywed??

It's been a year and a half now (since 3/19/11), and I can't figure out if it seems like we just got married or if it seems like we've been married forever. That makes no sense I guess...but sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday...and then other times I can't remember not being married. Does anyone else feel this way? Amanda, maybe you do? I don't know. I'm weird so it may just be me. 

I think that people may classify me as a newlywed until we have kids. (Read this post about baby fever for how I feel about that.) I'm cool with that. But I'm going to suggest that we have an in-between term for not "just married", but not married for several years with kids. Kinda like how I need a size smedium in most clothes. Not a small. Not a medium. Smedium.

I like to share what I'm learning as a wife from time to time, and I haven't done that in a while. Let's just narrow it down to things I've learned this past week.

1. Getting away (even just for a few days) is VERY healthy and necessary. For life, marriage, and sanity.

Here's an Instagram moment from our Labor Day trip to the NC mountains. I wanna go back already.

2. I'm a happier person and a nicer wife when I get enough sleep.

3. I can be disappointed and feel bad for not preparing/having time to cook a great dinner, or I can enjoy my trip to Subway to share a foot-long with my man. Just because I don't cook all the time doesn't mean I should feel guilty.

4. Jordan is only person in the world who really knows how to handle me. And my mini-meltdowns that I have from time to time. What a trooper.

5. Having an eternal perspective changes how I look at EVERYTHING. I have to remind myself of that daily! Otherwise I get caught up in the little things that ultimately don't matter.

Well, I could list 187 more things, but I'll leave it at that for now. I'm gonna throw this question back at Amanda for when she gets back from her little vacation. What have you learned lately? And what should we call this stage of marriage?

What do y'all think? Learned anything new this past week about life/relationships/marriage? 

Thanks so much for reading, and for having me here. :)