Lauren Akins - Live in Love: Growing Together Through Lifes Changes

A few years ago, just before the release of my husbands second album, before anyone outside of our country music family had heard the first note of his #1 single, Die a Happy Man, my life took a drastic turn.

Like a lot of wives, I had happily let my own goals take a back seat to my husbands. Ever since wed been together as a couplea couple for the second time, which is a whole other storyId been at Thomas Rhetts side. Squeezing into a single bunk on the tour bus, watching him play concerts from the side stage, holding his hand before he stepped in front of the cameras for press interviews and TV appearancesI was right there for all of it.

Before Thomas Rhett and I got married, Id gone to college and trained to be a nurse. But I wasnt practicing as a nurse. As his career took off, mine never had the opportunity to get started. Wed dreamed about starting a family, and we hadnt done that yet, either. Id always imagined that someday wed live in a neighborhood where everyones doors were unlocked and our kids could play in the streets, just the way Id grown up in my little Tennessee hometown. But since Thomas Rhett was on his way to becoming a big name in country music, my hopes for a normal suburban family life seemed increasingly out of reach. Dont get me wrong: Im not complaining! It filled my heart to see the love of my life come closer and closer to achieving his dreams. My husband is amazing, and I fully support him, and because I supported him and helped him reach his goals Ive been blessed to live out the rewards. This journey we were on was exciting and wonderful, but it was also forcing me to leave more than a little bit of myself behind. Letting go of the dreams I once had for a certain type of life in favor of the new kind of life that Thomas Rhett seemed to be headed forthat was hard. I was feeling lost.

Just as Thomas Rhett was getting ready to release his second album, though, God led me to an opportunity to do something Id wanted to do ever since I was a little girl. He gave me a chance to go on a mission trip to Haiti, to put my medical training to use in the best way I could ever imagine: helping children.

So the very week Tangled Up was released, I gave up my chance to stay in five-star hotels and live the fancy life of a country music stars wife, and went on a mission trip to one of the most impoverished nations on Earth. A mission trip that would change everything for us.

Die a Happy Man changed everything for us, too. The personal love song and video (with me in it) that was released as the albums second single led me and my husband into a shocking whirlwind of press and social media attention. Magazines and big TV shows that Id read and watched all my life were suddenly featuring not just him, but us in their pages and on their stages. And the publics expectations of us and their imaginations about us seemed to reach new peaks. Everywhere we looked people talked about Thomas Rhett & Lauren Akins as if we were one entity, the perfect couple; as if the video and the song were the embodiment of a fairy-tale romance come true. And in a way, they were. The fact that Id married my lifelong friend, the fact that wed dated as teenagers and then gotten together again in college, the fact that our families are really close and love each other, the fact that he writes songs for meall of it is romantic, and sometimes even dreamy. But when people started posting our Instagram pictures all over social media with the hashtags #RelationshipGoals and #MarriageGoals, I just kept thinking, Does anyone have any idea how hard its been? Does anyone understand how long its taken us to get things right? Does anyone understand what really goes on behind the scenes of a so-called perfect marriage?

Then something even bigger happened: Thomas Rhett and I became the parents of two incredible little girls. First came Willa Gray, the beautiful baby Thomas Rhett and I fell in love with and adopted while I was on a mission trip to Uganda; and then our amazing Ada James, whom I gave birth to in Nashville just three months after we brought Willa Gray home. (We also found out we had a third baby girl on the way when I was right in the middle of writing this book!)

What we never expected was how much people would love seeing pictures of our little family. We gained more social media followers and more press attention for the arrival of our two babies than almost anything else that had ever happened in Thomas Rhetts career. I cant explain it. Its not anything we courted. We didnt go and put our family on some reality TV show or anything, yet the interest has kept on rising to this day.

I dont sing, I dont dance, I dont act. Im a wife and mother, and I never wanted to be in the spotlight, but I have fans now. Its so strange to me. And every day those fans ask me for details about this life Im leading. They also ask for all kinds of advice, thinking maybe I can give them some insight into how they can lead a life like this, too. They want to know how to find (and keep) a good husband, how to keep romance alive in a marriage, about adopting babies, and raising kids right, and all kinds of things.