28 days of phrase.

Nine years ago today, i married a girl from Green Bay, Wisconsin. We were 21 and had the slightest notion of what Love was or is. We knew enough, just enough, to pack our bags and throw our surnames into one. While the Christmas season was overtaking Ohio with it's frosted trees and frozen streets, we waved good -bye and made our way west to the setting sun. It took us 2 years to feel connected to a foreign state with strange streets and restaurants. 2 years to feel like we could call a friend for a surf or a chai. It took 4 years till you could feel the solidity of the earths soil around our searching roots. All the while, we thought we knew each other…
It took us 6 &1/2 years to bring another life into this planet. Beauty and pressure came holding hands, giving us sunsets and kicking dirt. In marriage counseling, it was suggested that it takes 7 years to know someone. i think that's absurd. i know couples in the Wilderness, married for 40 years that don't know each other. You know someone when you're tested past the point of yourself, out in that dangerous enemy fire zone where sleep deprivation and ambition collide together while 2 are learning to care for 3. For us, it was 2 learning to care for 2 more. That broke us. Recently, just recently, we've started to really know each other. Grace met us when we were young and naive, it put the pieces together - it said, "I do." it moved us out to California when all reason and logic suggested otherwise. Grace is still meeting us. It met us this morning at 5:40am when the little chirps of new life start calling from their cribs. it's writing our story, while we're committed to it's plot. I married a girl with long honey curls hanging on tanned skin and a pocket organizer. She married a dude, with intentionally unkept hygiene and un-calculated moves. We're thrown into a scene where beauty is always the outcome, but pruning and loss are the nutrients to bring the rose to bloom. i am amazed at where we've been, and i'm amazed at where we are going. i'm amazed by the girl at my side. i'm amazed by the roar of the ocean and by the call of duty. by the little Anderson with blonde hair with the one with brown. i'm amazed by what Grace allows us to go through.

"it is only in the trying circumstances that human love is given its chance to have meaning, for it is only in these circumstances that it can be bourne out in deeds through time - even, to quote Shakespeare, "to the edge of doom" and thus prove itself true by fulfilling it's true term." - Wendell Berry