“Seventeen years is a long time to do anything. It almost seems like longer,” my wife observed in the car ride back home this past Saturday on our wedding anniversary. We had visited Mountain Escape Spa near Chattanooga, followed up with a fancy steak dinner at The Creag at McLemore Resort, then stopped by Mentone Market for dessert.

I agreed, “At a certain point, us being married became synonymous with life itself.”

From there, I explained my fascination to her that 17 years ago, at ages 27 and 26, we surely were completely different people; as compared to the versions of ourselves we would gradually evolve into over the years.

While we certainly are much more mature and “broken in” by now, compared to 2008, I am also able to identify that despite our “personality makeovers” which took place over the past 17 years, we are still fundamentally that same guy and girl we were back when we were mostly clueless.

It is so intriguing to me that the younger versions of us instinctively understood the psychology of our attraction; that having barely dated a year before we got married, and much of that being long distance, the 2008 versions of ourselves knew we were the right match for the long haul.

Looking back through pictures of us spanning those past 17 years, I can’t help but smile. Thank God those kids followed through with their intuition. They were right about each other.

We were right about each other.