On This Day in 2005…

PHOTO BY ROB GARLAND PHOTOGRAPHERS

It’s been seven years. We have two kids and a business, three moves to our history, and a relationship that has been rocked and broken and rebuilt several times over, because that is what keeps the deep and intimate and best relationships. I asked him this morning if it has been worth it; he said he wouldn’t answer me, said that he won’t say we “needed” to go through everything we’ve been through to get where we are, said he loves where we are.

I married my best friend, the one person in the world I couldn’t imagine living without. I’ve spent seven years learning how to be more than friends, learning what love means when real life gets gritty and unromantic, when anniversaries that begin with arguments end with the best memories, when the unplanned is more beautiful than what we expected.

Love is everything beyond what we could ask or imagine. It is painting together, growling at one another over building projects, holding one another when the kids are trying to climb our legs, doing dishes together, making life, becoming one. It is making room for one another to be the persons we were meant to be, two being stronger than one, three headed to Canaan (which doesn’t look at all like we two thought it did seven years ago). Love is remembering every day that we like each other, missing the sound of his voice when he’s gone for even ten minutes, never leaving when we feel we might not come back.

And for me it’s a trust that began about a year before we got married, when he stayed with me while everyone else moved on, when he was real where others were not, when he chose to stay because God asked him and not because he’d given his word or his heart or because I’d asked him for his presence. It’s a trust that began when God told him I was His and that was that and that has been that for the eight-and-a-half years that I’ve known him, and for the seven years that we have been married and he has held me gently and let God have His way with me so I can love them both from this restless heart.

He still kisses me like this. He still thinks I am cute. He still laughs at me and makes me blush. He’s slowly uncovering this broken heart and there are days I beg God for two lifetimes please to get to live with him because for all the ups and downs we’ve had, I can’t imagine having more fun than we’ve had over the last seven years.

I am so very glad we got married. So very, VERY glad. I love us.

FILED UNDER: Anniversary, Rob Garland Photographers, This is Us