Thursday Thirteen #16

Thirteen Thoughts on Being Married for Ten Years


*singing* Happy Anniversary to us, Happy Anniversary to us! Today, my wonderful hubby and I are celebrating ten years of marriage. *~*~*~*WOO HOO*~*~*~*, we're in the double-digits now! So here's a special Thursday Thirteen in honor of our love.

1. A friend of ours, who was at our wedding ten years ago, stopped by the other day and brought us some wedding pictures we hadn't seen. What fun to look at those pictures and remember. Hubby and I glow in those pictures as though we'd been lit up from within. And you know what makes me happiest about that? After ten years, we still glow, every year brighter and brighter, deeper and deeper.

2. Over ten years of marriage, a couple finds out what love and commitment are truly about. Love and commitment must be there for a couple to take their wedding vows, but it's facing life's challanges, both big and small, that seals those vows and solidifies the marital bond.

3. As part of the music on our wedding day, hubby and I played a recording of me singing and playing on piano a song I'd written about our love. As part of the lyrics, I sang: "Let us grow together, as now as for all time." That's what we've done and will continue to do.

4. Hubby and I lift each other up in a way that's hard to do justice to in words. We had needed each other all our lives, and now we have each other for all our lives. Even deeper than our love, joy, attraction, and friendship is a bedrock-solid foundation of love and acceptance and support that's unwavering. I simply cannot imagine anything on earth or in this vast universe that's more stable, that has more constancy and staying power, than the bond we share.

5. Hubby and I know that we'll always be there for each other, no matter whether one of us is in a bad mood, confused, upset, or stumbling through the briars of life's rough patches. We aren't a fair-weather couple -- we're an all-weather couple, and our marriage is an all-terrain vehicle.

6. Sure, we enjoy sunshine and smooth riding, and we have plenty of that, but we hold tightly together during storms and rough going by lending each other support. We are each other's refuge. Our love is our soft place to land. Our love for each other is what we count on most.

7. My husband is the sweetest man in this world, bar none. And he's also the bravest, most courageous man I know. He's a person I can confide in, lean on, rely upon. And it works both ways. I'm strong. I'm like a rock. And my hubby knows he can confide in me, lean on me, rely upon me.

8. Our natures are both similar and complementary. We are people of many interests, highly project-oriented. I'm a person of abstract systems (language and music) while hubby is a person of concrete, hands-on systems, whether mechanical or high-tech. Over ten years of marriage, we have learned so much from each other, and both of us are more well-rounded people than we could ever have been without each other. We agree on many if not most matters, but when we disagree, our love and respect for one another is such that we're okay with that. We respect and honor each other as individuals.

9. Facets of my hubby find their way into every main male character of each book I've written, and this will hold true for every book I'll write in the future. He's my muse. That doesn't mean my male characters are all the same. Far from it. It does mean, however, that my hubby is a delightfully multi-faceted man!

10. I've written a number of songs in honor of our love and marriage over the years, and here's a snippet of lyrics from one of them:

When I speak, you hear me
When I shine, you sustain me
Wrapped up in our gravitational trance
As we cavort in our deep dervish dance
The warmer and more fiery we glow
All this you are, don't you know

11. A lyrical snippet from another song:

The warmth with which you fill me
Nourishes my soul
You comfort and sustain me
And I am made whole
You are good for me.

12. And from yet another song:

Come with me, my love
To a place we can be free
And there we'll find us
A little bit of Home.

13. After ten years of marriage, neither of us takes the other for granted. Both of us had bad experiences with prior relationships, but one of the biggest things those experiences did was to make us ready for one another, to truly appreciate and hold dear what we share together. And that we will do forever.




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