10/13/12 | It drizzled this morning. So much so we unleashed the dotted umbrellas purchased last minute for our wedding. I worried about my hair, the guests, our pictures. Did you know some say rain on your wedding day is good luck?

Standing across from you in our college chapel, I feel more than luck. I feel fluttering in my chest — not fear or nerves, rather, an awakening. Love six years in the making shifts in its cocoon, ready to fly. Your sky-blue eyes twinkle back at mine. Our hope is palpable.

My childhood pastor stands across from us reciting, "O sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things." I want to savor everything — light flooding the altar, my gardenia perfume mingling with my roses, your hand in mine, firm yet gentle. At 26, we have big goals, you for your business, me with my writing. One day, we'd like to get a dog. We hope to own a home and start a family. Become a new creation.

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10/18/21 | We marked nine years of marriage last week. On our anniversary, a repairman was supposed to fix our long-broken oven. You laughed and called year nine "the oven anniversary." I promised to bake celebratory banana bread. That weekend, we'd visit your folks' place, where they'd watch our son, and we'd have a proper date night. Then the repairman cancelled. Our trip was postponed. And I wanted to say something here about our love, but I didn't.

Tonight, before you leave for another business trip, you snuggle next to me on our couch and read one of my essays. I watch you squint at the draft and think how hard it must be to love a writer. You've been loving me like this — seeing me as I want to be seen, cheering me on — since we met in college. I've watched with awe as you achieved your goals, never quitting. In 15 years, we've seen each other through illness, health, hardship and ease. Isn't that love, a kind of seeing?

Yet seeing you here, in the glow of our living room, I know the best part of these years hasn't been observing each other grow. It's been emerging together: traveling the world, cultivating a home, raising our son, making memories. We've been made new, over and over, through love and God's grace.