Open Letter to my Husband,
I've been thinking a lot about our story since my sister's wedding.
How it started.
Me, still a child at 16. You, just touching on what it meant to be a man instead of a boy at 20.
How it has threatened to end prematurely over the years.
My senior year in high school, when I thought we'd moved too quickly and that there were other adventures to be had [namely with a certain older man], when I questioned what we had before us.
Years 5-9 of our marriage, while you wrestled with yourself and God and I felt like I couldn't take anymore; while I took on too much and tried to juggle work with home.
How we've added to the cast and now have three beautiful children.
Each of which means so incredibly much to us. It's hard to find the words. Really.
How our characters have developed and grown into the people we are today, through God's stretching and pulling, life breaking who we were and putting us back together.
During those early years you seemed so wrought with insecurities, to the point that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wished you would let go of those feelings of inferiority you had, as they were based upon what the world said made you a man, and let God make you into a better man, the man I thought I was marrying all those years ago. How I no longer wish that, babe, because you are that man who finds his security in the Lord each day.
I imagine you feel much the same way about my own transformation, my own struggles and victories with my inner demons. And this past year has been a record-breaker in that regard for me....both of us, really.
I am so proud of the man you are and strive to be each day, and thank God for continuing to shape both of us along the way. I watch you with our children and see your desire to connect with them, teach them, and instill the important things of life with them, and feel so blessed. I see how hard you work, and the integrity with which you go about your work and I'm honored to be your wife.
How truth really is stranger than fiction.
Especially when we consider the miracles God has worked in our lives over the years, how our Truth is foolishness to the world.
How being with you not only makes me want to be better, it makes me better.
There's wanting to be better, like Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets, and then there's actually being made into a better person. I'm especially better with you when it's simultaneous to me drawing nearer to the Lord. We're better together, all three of us.
How I'm glad traditional wedding vows were written into our story.
(Lest anyone reading this take that as a slam on my sister's wedding, it totally isn't.) I'm glad that you and I vowed to love each other in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse, etc., because we have been through all of those, in varying degrees, over the years. And it has paid off holding true to those vows, especially for better or for worse.
How this story is still being written...
And while a lot is yet to be unseen still, one thing I know:
We're better together.
All 6 of us.
lest anyone think that is a pregnancy announcement, that is:
Seth + Me + God = 3 Kelsey+Colton+Christopher = 3
and last I checked 3+3=6
You have my love, dear. Until my heart stops beating.
© 2006-present Ramblings of a Red-Headed Step-Child. All Rights Reserved
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