Another year has gone by...

Eleven years ago a boy of a man asked me to spend the rest of my life by his side. This girl of a woman said, "yes!" in an instant. Hearts full of love and butterflies filling our stomachs, that boy and this girl, nearly 7 months later, said "I do" in front of beloved family and friends. 

This will probably be my last post of 2015. Knowing myself and how seldom I can find the time let alone the words these days to put together an entry, I thought this occasion, this day, was a perfect thing to mark an end to a year of...so much.

If we'd know eleven years ago the hard road we'd be on this year together, the days where butterflies were replaced by knots and a full heart seemed dashed to pieces... 

Eleven years ago, we thought we knew what love was. That light airy feeling that makes you giddy and excited, that keeps you constantly hopeful and optimistic. The young sprout of love that thinks you'll conquer the world and nothing bad will ever happen. 

Well, that love, maybe a true form to start, is weak. It doesn't weather the storms of life. That young love gets blown up and down in the winds of failures and disappointments and losses. We needed a love that would be stronger than that. That wouldn't bend or break at the first sign of pressure. Our love needed to grow. 

So love grew. Love grew and changed. Through many seasons, through green years and dry years. And each year, a little more growth. And storms would come and we'd bend a little less. Fear of breaking became a distant memory. And now, that young sprout of a love has turned into a love strong as an oak, shedding leaves in season, abiding through the winter and growing in the warmth of spring. And there have been wounds to this tree from the storms of life, even still, some quite deep; but the tree no longer bends or breaks from the damage. It slowly heals and continues to grow around the wound, never erased, always etched in its story, but never putting a pause in the growing process. 

I'd still choose him. If he asked me again today, I'd still say "yes!" in an instant. But the me who says yes, would know that more winters and storms will come, surely, but also that they would be followed by the rainbows of spring. And our tree will only keep growing.