Hardest moments in the first year of marriage.

I'm linking up with a bunch of lovely ladies for the newlywed and beyond link-up. The first year of marriage was hard. Now don't get me wrong, it was so much more amazing than I could have ever dreamed but there were times where I was stretched.

 "James 1:2-4 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."

This is the verse I love looking back on when thinking of that time because I know the things that Louis and I went through made us that much stronger as a couple. We also definitely had to learn to rely on God that much more.

So here are a few hard moments from our first year:

1.)Money- We had always been told before we got married that money was an issue that caused strife in so many different marriages. At the time I don't think I really believed them. Both of us were living with our parents before we got married so it was a BIG reality check when we were paying all of our bills by ourselves. On top of all of our normal bills we also both had accrued quite a bit of debt so we were putting all of the extra money we had left over into paying those debts off. This caused so much stress on our marriage because the only money we had left over after paying our bills off every month was enough to get a couple cheeseburgers from burger king. You better believe we did that too! ;) There were even times that the Lord provided for us when we thought we wouldn't even be able to buy groceries but we always ended up with more than enough! I'm so glad that my hubby stayed strict with the budget at that time, though because now we are almost completely debt free(except for our car).

2.)Buying a house- Last June we had started the process of buying a house. We found a house we loved about a week after we started looking. It was amazing! 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and had a HUGE backyard. We were absolutely in love. We were told we were pre-approved so we happily began the process of putting an offer on the house-which got accepted pretty quickly! Everything was falling into place. The inspection was finished(and paid for) and we were about a month away from the closing date. That July we had decided to go on vacation to Colorado, which was amazing by the way! It was basically the honeymoon we never got to have. On our way back home my husband got a call from our lender basically saying that we were no longer approved for the loan. She told us that that only way we would get this house is if we had a co-signer and about 6,000 dollars or so. We were devistated. We tried everything we could for the next month to get that house-even going to different lenders to try to get approved. Nothing seemed to work. Finally after pushing back our closing date another month I finally told Louis I was done. I didn't want to keep getting my hopes up and discouraged. That night Louis called our real estate agent and told her that we didn't want to continue with the process any more. We were both crushed. At the end of it all we just had to trust that God knew what He was doing-and that He had something even better planned for us. About a month later we found a very nice house to rent and have been there ever since. No, it's not our dream house but we are confident that God is going to help us get an even better house someday.

 3.)Trying for a baby- This was the hardest thing I think we had to go through as newlyweds. We had been trying for a baby since the day we got married and every month that it didn't happen I became more and more upset. It took a year of heartbreak before I finally got that positive pregnancy test. Seeing that positive after waiting that long was so amazing! God definitely answered our prayers! You can read more about that here.

So that was just a few things that happened in our first year of marriage. It was hard, but so so worth it. There hasn't been a day that has gone by that I haven't been so thankful for the amazing man that God brought into my life. Being married is so amazing-I'm so thankful I get to spend everyday with my best friend!