How Quickly It All Changes

It's weird....how you come together and all you think about is being together.  You come together and you have the beautiful ceremony and you pledge your love in front of God, family and friends.  After the ceremony, after the honeymoon.......you can't wait to get home to have dinner, to cook dinner for that man you love, that one who makes your day complete and puts the smile on your face.   You spend days and nights working alongside one another, cuddling in the dark of the morning, not wanting to get out of bed, for getting out of bed means letting go of the one you love.

Oh how I loved those mornings.  How I love those nights of preparing a meal, setting the scene with music and dimming lights and everything just so.

I miss them sometimes.

I miss who we were and how we were.

Before kids.

Before those sleepless nights, the piles and piles and piles of laundry, the whining, the crying, the exhausted days of a parent.

Would I trade my life for the one before?  The one before my heart, my joy, my adventure came along?

NEVER.  NOT FOR ONE SECOND.

But does that mean I can't miss those carefree days?  Those days where date night was every night?  Those mornings where an alarm woke us, woke us to mornings of cuddling up close to one another?  Those days where we woke together, rode together to school and came home together?  Those nights where we would come together for dinner and talk and reading and watching?  Those weekends filled with plans for us?

No, I can miss them and yearn for them and love the people we were while still loving who we are, who we are becoming.  Our children have grown us, tested us, loved us and made our lives all the richer for having had them.

I love that I still love my husband, that I yearn for the day that it will be he and I.  For my little ones will leave (though I have asked them to stay......and stay long) and someday it will be he and I.  I hope to still have that feeling 20 years down the road, that feeling of wanting it to be he and I.  I hold onto that feeling, that yearning, that longing.......for in the midst of chaos and sleeplessness and messiness and noise........I know that soon it will die down, much sooner than I ever hoped it would.  It will be quiet and clean and not so busy and it will be he and I at the table again.  The two of us.  Over bread and soup and fruit.  Staring at one another.  A lifetime lived.  A lifetime loved.   And into his eyes I will stare and see the same man I saw walking down the hall towards me.......a blue dress shirt, a red tie, khaki pants, walking towards me in a school hallway......walking towards a life lived together and I will rejoice that we made it.  That we started as one and ended as one......through all the insanity and craziness and reading endlessly at 6:00 in the morning, the peed on beds at 3:00 in the morning, the feedings at 1:00 in the morning.  We made it..........

We are together; forever and ever..........love you, babe.  Looking forward to the rest of forever........