Ten Years Ago

April 18, 1998 - Click to Enlarge
Today is our ten year wedding anniversary! Wow I can't believe how fast time has flown. I was looking at pictures yesterday and it doesn't seem that long ago that we were living in our first apartment in Highland Park in Dallas.

Ten years and two kids later we are as happy as we could be. Maybe not as rested but definitely happy. Tonight we are staying home and watching some of our favorite TV shows, possibly the movie Juno, and our wedding video. Tomorrow we plan to go out for lunch and spend the afternoon together while my Beth and Brandon watch the kids. Then we are going out for an evening on the town. We are very excited about our day and evening together tomorrow.

It's hard to articulate the depth I feel for Allison after ten years of marriage. It's funny that this is the case because I have always been one who finds expressing these kinds of sentiments to be easy to express.

I was talking to Brandon last night and I was telling him how great it is that I am in my tenth year of marriage rather than my first (can I get an AMEN from the husbands out there). I said that because coming to understand a person takes a lot of time and often requires a lot of mistakes before a clear picture emerges. A lot of things about marriage came easy to us, and some things about being together have been a challenge. Yet through it all my commitment and love for her as never wavered.

Part of the difficulty in articulating my feelings for her are wrapped up into my own deep feelings about my children. The change in our lives because of having kids hasn't always been easy for me and probably not for her either, although I bet for different reasons. When Allison was my girlfriend, fiancé, or simply my wife life was more or less about "us" and what was or wasn't working for the two of us. And then, three and three-quarter years ago (as Levi would want to make clear) we became parents. Our marriage took on a whole new dimension, one that ceased to revolve around just us, but now encompassed Levi and eventually Zeke.

The love and nurturing that is poured into our boys by Allison drives the fierce love and bond I feel for her. Incredibly these feeling grow every day. We have reached a significant milestone in our lives together. It's my prayer that it will be one of many, many, many more to come. I am honored and humbled that God would see fit for me to have a wife like Allison. I am not always the husband to her that she deserves and she isn't always the wife she wants to be for me. But it's in those times of falling short as well as being right on that we begin to understand how deeply and profoundly we are joined together. Tonight as we sit and watch ourselves as twenty-three year old kids getting married in Harding Park and will be amazed at how fast time has flown by.

Thanks to all of our family, friends, and church who have walked with us on our journey together. It's with their friendship, love, and support that we have come to see each other better too.

Allison, I love you more than I am able to express. You bring me so much goodness and light, thank you for marrying me.