3 years Darling

Hello friends,

Summer is here.  I hope you’re taking every opportunity to lie in the sun, drink something cool and show some skin.

Yesterday was a big day.  A favorite day.

The boy and I have been married for three years!!!!

Hurrah!!

Best three years of my life. 

We’ve been living and loving together for a while now. 

It’s still so sweet to me to wake up beside him.

We met through an internship program and the Camping Ministry.  There were 18 of us and we all became the closest of friends.  We went through the internship aware that it was going to be one of the best seasons of our lives.  We were both so thankful of the friends and experiences we got that year.  We got closer together, just like we were with everyone else.  Everyone was so important to me, like family.  Friendship doesn’t really seem to describe it.  Brad was especially easy to love—we grew close and were so familiar with each other.  One time I even told him that if I had a twin that was a boy it would be him.  It was a huge, weird compliment from me. 

Camp during the summer is hectic, and sweaty, and crazy and fantastic. 

The girls in my cabin each week told me that Brad loved me and that I obviously loved him (imagine this in shrill, giggly voices).  I would say each time that we were just friends, but they never believed me (I have since sent each one an email apologizing that I didn’t listen to them sooner).

Then one day, the always confident Brad, fumbled around this speech of how he liked me.  How leaving to go back to New Mexico (from Wisconsin, where we both were) in two weeks was exciting, but something had changed in him and he couldn’t go back without telling me that he wanted to be with me.  That night I told him that I would at least give him the attention he wanted.  Said that we would try it.  See how it went.  We wrote letters back and forth, barely had any time together b/c of the summer camp chaos. 

Four days later, right before he got onstage to lead us all in worship, I told him I loved him and that I wanted to be with him forever.  He says now that I proposed to him then and there.  Maybe I did.  I said whatever I said and I just walked away (I had to make sure that my girls were eating their dinner and not doing anything too crazy).  He says that he could barely get through that night’s set because he couldn’t concentrate.

The next year was flights back and forth from St. Louis to Albuquerque.  Hours of conversations over the phone every night, letters and mementos sent back and forth.  People say long distanced relationships are doomed, too hard to be able to make it through, but for us it was natural and easy.  We had a wedding date—knew it would be for forever—so we easily stuck it out.  Talking to him each night was the best part of my day.

On June 21, 2008 in an old, factory warehouse we got married.  It was a hot, muggy Southern Illinois day.  It’s such a blur in my memory. 

Three years later and here we are.

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

Life is fantastic
-Weeds-