milestone

We met in a Safeway checkout line. He was the express check-out cashier and I was checking him out while he (literally) was checking me out. I think I've told that story here before but it's a good one I love to tell because who else has met her husband in a grocery store check-out line?

If someone would have whispered in my ear back then, this is your future husband, I would have laughed in surprise. Here was this tall good looking guy with chin length, beach volleyball hair, several earrings in each ear, and a sarcastic wit that could slice you in two.

Incredibly handsome, but not at all my type.

But then, who marries her type? Really.

He and I wound up running with the same circle of friends and dated other people, but it was not until three years after our first meeting that he actually asked me out. Two years later we were married.

Six houses, three towns, countless hours of graduate school, eleven jobs (between the two of us), and two kids later, we are still together.

Today we celebrate fifteen years of marriage. Sometimes it feels like fifty, other days it feels like we just started this journey.

But now we have more grey hair and wrinkles (ahem, he has more grey hair) and experiences, both amazing and painful, that could fill a book. We have no more money in our bank account than when we first started but we are rich in wisdom, the kind of wisdom that comes from the hard lessons, the hard talks, and a couple of years of marital counseling. We have strength that sometimes surprises me. We have a love that refuses to give up.

We have each other.

These past couple of years have been difficult in other ways, but this is what I have come to treasure through it all: a husband that loves me, and a husband that I love.

The older you get, the more you realize that this is truly a gift.

The card I gave him this morning said, "I would choose you all over again."

So true. So very true.

I love you Pal.
xoxo