Twenty years ago, I told Brent that I didn’t think I could ever be happier or more in love. I was terrified that the love wouldn’t last, that no one should have the right to be so happy for very long. It’s a rule in my family. There are no equal parts love and joy and pain and suffering. The majority of life is about pain and suffering with sprinkles of good stuff.
He told me that I was wrong. That it would get better, every day, and that we would love each other more as time passed, and experience even greater depths of joy.
Every year about this time, he reminds me and I tell him I hate it when he’s right.
He’s been reminding me for twenty years.
I really hate it when he’s right.
I can’t imagine the path my life would have taken if I hadn’t stopped my reckless, self-involved journey and paused to examine the man that fell from the sky into my world. I know that his life would have continued on its dull path, full of routine and consistency, working up the ladder at work slowly, pay increases on an annual basis, a house, maybe a wife and family, dog and cat, vacations twice a year, PTA meetings, church, a quiet and well-ordered life filled with meaning and significance, but a straight and narrow path.
Instead, he met me.
Within less than two years of our wedding, we were traveling the road full-time in a 30 ft. fifth wheel, taking photographs and writing about our adventures. By our fifth wedding anniversary, we were in Israel, exploring the unholy land and Europe, broadening our horizons. By the tenth anniversary, we’d just left the war zone that Israel and the middle east had become and moved to the US southern Gulf Coast in time for ALL of the hurricanes to beat us into submission. By the fifteenth anniversary, we’d bought a house and left the RV life to travel in airplanes and cars to our destinations, getting their faster but without the true joy of the getting there. By our twentieth, both of us are working “normal” jobs in addition to our freelance work, still traveling, in a home without wheels surrounded by friends and our three cats, and living and loving together better than every before.
We are still best friends, sharing everything with each other, eagerly rushing home to tell each other about our day, working on projects together, cheering each other on through all of the ups and downs of life.
In retrospect, he was right. There is more love and joy year by year than the nasty stuff. It’s really a life filled with joy and love with sprinkles of the bad stuff.
Happy anniversary, my love, and thanks for being right…this time.