One of the great things about being married is that I always have a Valentine. Unfortunately, I don't have any great gift for my Valentine or a scavenger hunt with poems for our last 10 years together like I did last year. I don't even have a card for my wonderful husband. Pregnancy, housework, jumping through hoops to get Cooper into an integrative kindergarten, and my own laziness have gotten in the way of my romantic creativity. And believe me, Peter has never deserved my love and adoration more.
All I have to offer today for my love is to dig up an excerpt from an old e-mail that I wrote to him in August of 2008. While I think that Peter and I share a great marriage, there are times in any marriage where you just feel out of sync and not at all on the same page. I tend to overthink everything and my expectations tend to spoil things for the both of us. And very much like my mother, I often have sleepless nights when my head is racing with a million thoughts. On this particular night, I was reminded of what our marriage really boiled down to (the ugly and the beautiful), and this is what I shared with my Valentine about a year and a half ago.
What is our marriage? It is having a best friend to share every experience. Knowing that however far apart we seem from one another at any moment, I am never alone. It is seeing you for the first time at the boathouse - the most breath taking handsome man I had ever seen in person. It is clinging to each other blinded by tears as you almost lost your mom and I lost mine. You pulling me aside in a Boston stairwell for our first kiss. You charming my Granny Howell, and her calling you "a hunk". My short, agitated, often hurtful tone just because we aren't on schedule or because I can't find the car keys. Watching your giant hands and arms cradle our tiny newborn son, and a smile on your face I will forever carry in a special place in my heart. Saving voice messages and leaving things around the house just as you left them when you go away on a trip, just in case those are the last indicators that I would have if you didn't make it back safely to me. The missing feeling I have when we have had to be apart, as if I were missing a part of my own flesh and bone. Moments laying together in bed, staring out the window at a blue sky and dreaming about what our life together will hold . . . and other times laying in bed together talking for hours fumbling to put feelings into words to find our way back to one another. The hurt look in your eyes when I step in to take over in moments when you want to be a daddy and to be the one to take care of Cooper. Being carried on your back all the way down a stunningly beautiful snowy mountain in the moonlight with a sprained ankle (one of the most romantic moments of my life). You going to work each day so that I can just be a wife and mom, and the little excited flutter in my stomach when I hear the car door and know that you are home. My mother reading scripture from Ruth at our wedding and her peaceful radiance on that day knowing that she was handing her daughter off to the right man. A thousand memories and moments that remind me that "for better or for worse" (and there are a lot more "for worse" moments than you bargained for) there is no one else that I would want to spend my life with.
Most days I feel like someone other than myself, someone who is much more bitter and hardened than I want to be. And most days that is the person whose voice and actions take over. But you should know that the giddy, love struck, care-free girl that you met nearly 10 years ago is still the same inside. Don't ever let her go. While the disappointments and heartaches of this earthly life have hardened her and made her almost unrecognizable, it is these same disappointments and heartaches that eventually (with time) help us to appreciate our blessings and make us who we are meant to be. I know for certain that if I lost you today, I would be overcome with regret that I didn't appreciate the blessing of your love as the precious treasure from God that it really is.
There is only one explanation for a devastatingly handsome German boy to meet and fall in love with a sensitive, silly, southern girl in smalltown, Georgia. God has an incredible plan for us and His blessings are far beyond what we deserve. My prayer tonight is that He will continue to bless our marriage, and that he will chisel away the hardened barriers that I put up; that he will break me and humble me so that I am blinded by the glorious gifts that He has given to me. I also pray that He will help me to accept the things that I can't control and the things that don't go my way and replace resentment and anger with grace, forgiveness, and love. Finally, I pray that he will continue to lead us in the directions that He chooses for us, and that he will reveal more opportunities to draw closer to one another.
I know that I am not easy to deal with, but I thank you for bearing with me and for loving me when I am impossible to love. You are mine and Cooper's (and Kayla's) hero. I love you immensely.
All I have to offer today for my love is to dig up an excerpt from an old e-mail that I wrote to him in August of 2008. While I think that Peter and I share a great marriage, there are times in any marriage where you just feel out of sync and not at all on the same page. I tend to overthink everything and my expectations tend to spoil things for the both of us. And very much like my mother, I often have sleepless nights when my head is racing with a million thoughts. On this particular night, I was reminded of what our marriage really boiled down to (the ugly and the beautiful), and this is what I shared with my Valentine about a year and a half ago.
What is our marriage? It is having a best friend to share every experience. Knowing that however far apart we seem from one another at any moment, I am never alone. It is seeing you for the first time at the boathouse - the most breath taking handsome man I had ever seen in person. It is clinging to each other blinded by tears as you almost lost your mom and I lost mine. You pulling me aside in a Boston stairwell for our first kiss. You charming my Granny Howell, and her calling you "a hunk". My short, agitated, often hurtful tone just because we aren't on schedule or because I can't find the car keys. Watching your giant hands and arms cradle our tiny newborn son, and a smile on your face I will forever carry in a special place in my heart. Saving voice messages and leaving things around the house just as you left them when you go away on a trip, just in case those are the last indicators that I would have if you didn't make it back safely to me. The missing feeling I have when we have had to be apart, as if I were missing a part of my own flesh and bone. Moments laying together in bed, staring out the window at a blue sky and dreaming about what our life together will hold . . . and other times laying in bed together talking for hours fumbling to put feelings into words to find our way back to one another. The hurt look in your eyes when I step in to take over in moments when you want to be a daddy and to be the one to take care of Cooper. Being carried on your back all the way down a stunningly beautiful snowy mountain in the moonlight with a sprained ankle (one of the most romantic moments of my life). You going to work each day so that I can just be a wife and mom, and the little excited flutter in my stomach when I hear the car door and know that you are home. My mother reading scripture from Ruth at our wedding and her peaceful radiance on that day knowing that she was handing her daughter off to the right man. A thousand memories and moments that remind me that "for better or for worse" (and there are a lot more "for worse" moments than you bargained for) there is no one else that I would want to spend my life with.
Most days I feel like someone other than myself, someone who is much more bitter and hardened than I want to be. And most days that is the person whose voice and actions take over. But you should know that the giddy, love struck, care-free girl that you met nearly 10 years ago is still the same inside. Don't ever let her go. While the disappointments and heartaches of this earthly life have hardened her and made her almost unrecognizable, it is these same disappointments and heartaches that eventually (with time) help us to appreciate our blessings and make us who we are meant to be. I know for certain that if I lost you today, I would be overcome with regret that I didn't appreciate the blessing of your love as the precious treasure from God that it really is.
There is only one explanation for a devastatingly handsome German boy to meet and fall in love with a sensitive, silly, southern girl in smalltown, Georgia. God has an incredible plan for us and His blessings are far beyond what we deserve. My prayer tonight is that He will continue to bless our marriage, and that he will chisel away the hardened barriers that I put up; that he will break me and humble me so that I am blinded by the glorious gifts that He has given to me. I also pray that He will help me to accept the things that I can't control and the things that don't go my way and replace resentment and anger with grace, forgiveness, and love. Finally, I pray that he will continue to lead us in the directions that He chooses for us, and that he will reveal more opportunities to draw closer to one another.
I know that I am not easy to deal with, but I thank you for bearing with me and for loving me when I am impossible to love. You are mine and Cooper's (and Kayla's) hero. I love you immensely.
2 comments:
Happy Valentines Day. I'm sorry that I had to cut our conversation short. Hope to talk to you again soon. I love you.
This made me cry. That has to be the best Valentine's Day card EVER!!! Like, Hallmark could have said it better!? Right. . .
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