You and Me plus three - A love letter

 

For better or worse
For richer or poorer
In sickness and in health

We said those words together on that chilly spring day, bare feet on a brick path, and little did we know what we were in store for.  It's not our anniversary, it's not your birthday, or my birthday or any other special day today, but this is a day that I tell you how much I love you.

We've had our ups and downs, sorrows and joys, have been broke, living in a one bedroom upstairs apartment where the winter winds whistled in through the cracks.  We've been together.  We've been apart.  We have been crazy about each other and have driven each other crazy.  We have been wildly in love and wanting to spend every moment together and we have come as close to hatred of each other as two people who are married should ever come.  Maybe a bit too close.

We reached an equilibrium after a whole lot of work and had a good life, you and me.  It wasn't peaches and roses all the time, but we were together and it was pretty great.  Then the life we knew and the plans we made got turned upside down.  Babies, losing babies, crappy cars, crappy jobs and layoffs, and a leaky old house that drives you crazy and drives me to daydreaming.  It has been a wild last 4 years!  Sometimes it's seems as if we are just holding on with eyes tight shut until the wind stops blowing and the waves stop pounding us, praying we make it through the storm.  But this storm isn't a storm, really.  It's life.  And without you in it, I would have been swept out to sea a long time ago.

I don't say enough how great you are.  How thankful I am that you have put aside your dreams to take care of our family, even though the way you have had to go about it is soul crushing work.  How I wish it was different for you.  How happy it makes my heart to see you run and play and love on our children because I know how much you love them.  And how hard that is for you and hard earned, since you didn't have a dad around to show you how to love them.  How content I am to just hold your hand as we sit across from each other at our favorite coffee shop, enjoying a stolen moment alone, feet entangled under the table and you open your heart to me just a bit more and I marvel at the things you show me.  You have a deep love for me and our family and for others that I sometimes forget but sometimes get a glimpse of and it wows me.  It shocks me.  It surrounds me.  You love with a fierce love.

When I lay there pale in the hospital bed and you were brave for both of us.  Both times, brave for both of us as I came unraveled.  You were a rock for me.  And then when I got my breath back, you cried for our lost babies.  I love you so much for that.  

We are so different and sometimes it frustrates me, more from a lack of understanding (and a big dose of fear) of how two people who are so polar opposite in occupation and hobbies could come together and stay together.  Perhaps it is the sameness in substance that binds us.  Your joy, even if sometimes it's covered up in the weight of family life.  Your tender heart, even if you hide it, I know it's there.  Your Faith in our Father.  Your loyalty.  Your depth of character.  All those grey hairs you have earned in the last 8 years, caring about things.  Your generosity to not just your friends and family, but to strangers.  Your kindness to find good in me and others when we can't find it ourselves. 

So life may send the 'sickness', the 'poverty', and the 'worse', but I'll take it as long as you are in it with me.  I'll stand by you always.  I'm so grateful you carried my guitar all those years ago and let me ramble on about degreasing my engine.  You pursued my heart and wrapped it up with yours, healing wounds I didn't know I had.  Who you are is a blessing.  Thank you.

All my Love,
Tiny