Four Years To The Day (Except It Was A Friday)

 "Psalm 126:3: The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy."

Hey, Joe, remember everything I said about Passat the other day? Like how I love it and need it and we've been through so much together and I love to stare at its body? Well, I feel all the same things about you, except stronger. (Oh. Oops. Erase that last thing. There's some things our families don't want to know.)

Since our wedding day we've had a picture-perfect marriage...if you ignore the few disturbing, randomly-placed grayish-black bruisey smudges on the landscape. Ours is a painting of sunshine and massive blue sky and probably lots of fruit because fruit is good and delicious, and watermelon, and hugs if you could paint them, and green grass everywhere, and a galaxy painted in the sky because galaxies are shaped cool. It's bright and happy and in a rectangular frame, because it's long, because our four years together have been long (but only take a few minutes to look at, like most art.)

Just...there are those black marks in the picture. You hardly notice them for all the pieces of candy lying around, but I won't pretend they're not there. And we've found that you can't paint over something you've already put down.

Overall, though, the canvas is bright enough to make your eyes hurt. Those black marks, they make the rest of the colors glow.

11/2008

01/2009

06/2009 - Renaissance Faire

06/2010 - Basic Training Graduation

You're so good to me. I trust you. I love you. I'm in love with you. I want four more years with you (and four more after that, and then four more, and another four, and probably even more.) I don't have a clue what work we're meant to do together, but I hope we do it well. I want to somehow, in some small tiny way, begin to repay the incalculable gift we've been given in each other.

08/2011 - Hiking in Korea (and that's a worm on my hand)

So, darlin, thank you. Thank you for always loading the groceries into the trunk in the rain so I can get in the car and watch through the windows as you take the cart back while I munch whatever I managed to grab out of a grocery bag. Thank you for holding my hand in unfamiliar bathrooms while I turn on the water in the shower to make sure nothing bad will happen. Thank you for carrying that biscuit in your pocket so I could feed the geese. Thank you for running back up the mountain again to see if I left my camera up there.

I can't believe how much I love you.

And, really, I can't believe how much you love me.

Happy anniversary.