the glass blower

Last year on this day, I told our love story.

Another year has flown by and today my beloved and I are thankful for 12 years of "us."

After getting married young and having a couple of rocky years at the beginning, we entered several years of growing and learning and trying and failing and trying and succeeding and finding our rhythm.

What I realized today, is that we have really entered a great season. It is definitely not without stress, conflict, or situations that highlight our differences.

But it is steady, strong, and full of grace for each other.

Over these years we have both learned a lot and changed for the better. That change has come with a lot of humility and hard work and the desire to always make our marriage better.

And all that change came through various avenues.

Through marriage counselors,
and books
and retreats
and sermons
and good friends who kicked our butts encouraged us to die to our selves.

Through this process, we have both softened. We've removed our heels from the issues that they were digging and dragging in and really worked hard to love each other in the way the other person would hear and feel our love coming through.

Not the way we ourselves would necessarily "hear" love.

It's been a long, hard process for me personally (can't speak for my beloved) because I am such a selfish person who likes to be "all about me."

I mean, it is all about me, isn't it?

But I've learned that a marriage this great takes every day self sacrifice and purposeful care and grace.

Tonight, my beloved sleeps in a bed in a hotel hundreds of miles away from me. We are delaying our anniversary celebration for the weekend, but he sent me a very heartfelt email tonight.

I won't share all the good stuff, but I thought he worded quite well where we are at after a dozen years:

The best way I can describe it is that we “fit together.” Not in the way a puzzle piece joins seamlessly with another, however more like two pieces of glass that have similar jagged edges and then are melded into one piece with heat and time by the glass blower to make a single piece that, while retaining some of it’s individual, original color and characteristics, has no distinguishable seam.

That is, a single piece of glass that has been tested and worked by the glass maker to create a piece that works together while looking different from most, if not all the other pieces of glass in the world.

I love you Kenyon. You are my Alpha and Omega on this earth.