anthony.
i stand with you and our children today in the same spot where on my thirtieth birthday i said YES. right where we later said I DO.
where we came when we adopted snoop, and where we visited when we were pregnant.
this is the spot we watched our babies splash. the place i have come to my whole life for peace. renewal. and strength.
today, on our tenth wedding anniversary i love you no less but no more than i loved you then.
i love you DIFFERENTLY. today i love you in a way I couldn’t possibly have before.
there was no way i could love you like this until i watched you comb our daughter’s hair. i wasn’t capable of loving you like this before i sat with you and our tiny newborn son. love like this was not available to me until i came home to a scene of you and hunter throwing a baseball while janet read a book on the steps. i could not truly love you this way until you read little house to the kids. or before i watched you do surgery on our chickens’ bumblefeet. or before you sat quietly with me during a spicy panic attack. i could not love you like this until you were the brave one while hunter was in the hospital with an impossibly high fever. Or before we sat waiting for results of janet’s eeg.
i did not know it was even possible to love like this until i knelt beside you, week after week at 9am mass.
anthony i have never needed you.
i could, quite frankly, live without you.
but i CHOOSE you.
every day.
i WANT you.
every day.
you are the one who makes me most myself. you are my sounding board. my safe place to land. the person i want to watch baseball with. the man i have thanked God for every single day of the last ten years.
it HAS always been you.
it WILL always be you.
so – anthony – ten years later – i still do.
promise you.
continued laughter.
constant support.
unwavering faith.
and complete and total trust.
i vow to make the next ten as loud and lovely as the first.
thank you for making my life as your wife so freakin happy.
You’ll never sink when you are with me
Oh Lord, I’m your Dead Sea
