Happy Anniversary

The older I get the more I realize my life just becomes larger.  I do not cleanly move out of one phase o f my life and neatly into another, leaving behind one set of responsibilities and joys to take on a new set.  Rather, my world is increasingly getting bigger and more complex.  More and more pieces swirl around me demanding attention, resources, and energy.  Some days this swirling vortex that is  life can stop me in my tracks and leave me drained, other days, the people, and activities, leave me bursting with pride and energy, and fulfilled and grateful beyond belief.  However, most days, life swirls around me unnoticed as I move through my routines.

It is generally only with milestones in life that I stop to reflect at how large and full my life really is.  For Adam and I today happens to be our 4^th wedding anniversary and 6^th year together.  As I stop to stand still today, I  feel sort of like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz  inside of her house, calmly sitting on a couch, while nature whips my life up and around outside of the window.  The further we get into our marriage together the more pieces I see whirling around me.   All of those pieces are rewarding and scary at the same time, and each of them is rooted in our marriage.  So many things have come together in just four short years for us.  The time is going altogether too fast.  On the average day I want things to move quickly so I can get home, or get to the weekend, or get to the holidays.   But when I take a step back and realize how fast it is all going I want to scream for it to slow down. 

From where I sit and watch life whipping around me today, I am reminded of what an absolute perfect choice in a partner I have made, and how grateful I am to have a man who honors me, values me and anchors me.  We have not been married  a very long time, but the time we have had has been full of wonderful milestones and many situations where we really had to lean on one another.   Life is never perfect, for anyone (don’t let them fool you).  But, it’s in those hard times, in those cracks in our plans where our marriage has grown stronger, our friendship deepened, and our trust was tested and built upon. Adam is a source of true joy in the good times, and he always reminds me to stop being anxious long enough to enjoy what is in front of me,  he is also a rock  to me when our  plans deviate and life does not go as I thought it would.  Adam is open to what our future will look like and isn’t rooted to anyone outcome, he is here to build a life with me without expectation or pretext, there are no words to express how deeply I love him for being that man.  I am not sure if every wife has a husband like this, but I am so very very grateful to have Adam as mine.

When we got married four years ago today I had said in my vows that I am stubborn and independent and I hated admitting that  I needed anyone, but I was proud that day to say, in front of all of our family and friends,  that I needed Adam.  I need him more and more each day that goes on.   But an interesting thing has happened over the years, instead of that need scaring me, it comforts me.  It means our life is getting bigger, and our potential for joy greater.  Adam is a person I deeply need, and I am just as proud to admit that today as on the day we got married.

I have written about this before, but  every Passover we go through and do this grammatically challenging exercise where we talk about the situations or people in our life where having just one person or experience would have been enough to satisfy your life’s ambition.   That if you had that one thing,  it would be enough.   If not a single other good thing ever happens to me in my life, I can say that Adam and our wonderful family are enough for me.   That is a beautiful bit of knowledge to have and treasure.   It’s like a rope I can always hold onto when life gets whipped up around me and it feels so big and, I feel so small.  I can always remind myself that I have Adam and Annie and the rest, well the rest is what we make of it.  Thank you so much Adam for giving me such peace in life.  I want to wish you a very Happy Anniversary Adam you are a wonderful man, I am so lucky to have you, and I want the world to know it.

I love you, 

Ashley