Yes, I Love You Even More

Five years.

It seems so much longer than that! In actually fact, that is in part because we've known each other and been together for nine years. I know it's a drop in the bucket compared to some, but when i consider all that we have been through in those years alone, I am astonished!

I was joking with a friend and her husband that I try not too look too closely at any one year because it's rather overwhelming. And most of the time I would say it's treu. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm reflective about things, but I'm in a place where one major events seems to run into another, so the division from one year to another seems arbitrary in the same way that as a stay at home mom I really don't have a "weekend". Sure it's a little different, but not remarkably so that it needs a different name.

However, the fall has always been my 'new year'. My birthday is in September, as is our wedding anniversary. Baby Girl's birthday is in October. And of course, school starts in the fall- early September in Canada.

I feel more productive come September, as if I really do start a new year now rather than in the dreary month of January. Having spent most of my life in a place with rather wet winters, Januarys tend to be grey and damp. Where are you supposed to find renewed energy in all of that?

Today, five years ago, I married an amazing man. A man that, truthfully, doesn't know how amazing he is and whom I have to think up new ways to show me that.

We've come along way! Through commuting 5 hours to see each in the early stages of our relationship when we lived in different cities, to living together for the first time (my first time being away from home!), my spiral down into being diagnosed with Fibromyaglia, my recovery and also coping with anxiety, depression and panic attacks, finishing his master, my going back to school, getting married, my leaving school so we could start a family, two miscarriages (and a major bump in mariage as a result), a third pregnancy and birth(!), completing his PhD, the stress of having no work and giving up our home, living with family to keep a roof over our heads, getting a job overseas, being apart for several months while we waited for visas, moving overseas, and tackling the challenges that being away from home presents.

We are lucky. We have so much, and we have each other. Not every day is prefect, and help us of we're both feeling down on the same day, butI wouldn't trade it for anything.

I am more and less because of him, in that I as an individual person is less important than the amazing combination of us as a team. We became more together. We are still two people, with our own fears, and hopes and dreams, but we're stronger and smarter together. I didn't think it would be possible to love someone more years later, but I do. I am humbled.

And we have a happy little girl who amazes us to no end, even on the days we want to curl up and hide.

Life is crazy, and yet in all of that, the most important things are simple and true: that love can't fix everything, but it does provide answers when you least expect it, and that one person is okay, but sharing your life with another reminds you are never alone, that someone will be there for you every step of the way.

Ironic that today he is overseas for work. I still don't feel alone.

Happy Anniversary Love.