Anniversary

The greatest thing he ever gave me was the freedom to be nothing important. I was sitting there broken and pretending to be more than enough and he sat me down and told me in one short list that I was exactly enough just the way I am.

He keeps me respectful, most of the time. He keeps me honest, except when we play cards. He keeps me talking, even when he wishes I was upstairs sleeping so he could go up a level on his video games. He keeps me.

He is stubborn, competitive, and gets passionate about things I sometimes don't understand. He baffles me with his ability to remain calm when I am boiling over. He is the reason my cup runneth over, the patient moment at the end of a day when no words need to fill the room, and the only reason I am starting to understand the concept of "dealing with siblings".

He never expects me to be perfect and yet calls me the perfect thing when I least expect it which makes me sometimes wonder if he is. He makes me feel sexy when he is witty with me and lets me express my over the top, curse like a sailor and act like a 17 year old side.

Because of him I am a better mother, a better wife, a better daughter and a simplier friend. He has become the voice of reason in my moments of panic, the voice of forgiveness in my moments of anger and the voice of love in the moments when I lose my faith.

You would think that's why I married him... but the truth is that who he is has been amplified by our marriage, his becoming a father and our growth together. Who he is has become defined by moments of chaos, moments of pain, moments of struggle.

He has aged so much more gracefully than I have in this two years of marriage and now I know that I loved the man I married... and I love that marrying him made him into a man I can love even more.

I love that he is part of what defines me. He is part of what makes me who I am. For I am his and I always will be. His love is... undefinable.