Memories and Gratitude

I spent an hour this morning going through pictures in an effort to create a video slide show anniversary card for Shawn. I am amazed at all the memories that come flooding back. All of the good memories, all of the memories of the very challenging seasons some of which lasted for years on end. I watched these memories go by and I watched our marriage strengthen and our love and commitment grow stronger.

With so many relationships around me broken and watching all the heart ache that follows, it makes me even more grateful when I look at all those moments and I say that could have been us; we could have been broken too. I thank God, I thank God with my whole heart, for what I have, for what Shawn and I have together. And I pray that God would keep our minds and our hearts guarded as we protect our relationship, and our commitment to each other to working things out in good times and bad.  I ask God to bless us and give us our lifetimes together.

Those memories include some which we almost wish we could forget. But those challenging times, those really hard times; in some ways I'm grateful that they're there, because they give validity to the strength of our relationship.

I also saw how when I finally knew; finally believed that Shawn really really really did love me, how it made it building our marriage/relationship easier. About our seventh or eighth year of marriage I began to really believe and accept that my husband really loves me (not some "idea of me but not the real me" that I had been worried and upset about for years). I can watch through the pictures that (especially after our 10th anniversary) the relationship grows stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. Even in the hard times that followed.

I am just so thankful. I am just so determined to keep our relationship (friendship, love, and partnership) alive, adapting, growing, deepening, widening, and strengthening. 

I am thankful that through our our adoration of each other God brought us together; thankful that He has kept us together (holding each of our hands as Shawn said once) as we stayed committed to each other through the hard times and joyful & peaceful times.  I beseech (a word that sounds stronger than ask or pray) God, please bless our marriage with love, laughter, and strength for a long life together.  Amen. 

Sept 6, 1986

Sept 6, 1986

April 2013

August 2013
Still holding hands

published Sept 6, 2013