Loving you used to look like sneaking peaks through the panes of glass in the front door as you sauntered down the road toward my house. It used to look like sending family members out to stall you so I could finish brushing my hair and applying lip stick one last time. It used to look like riding shotgun in your parents jeep down dirt roads with the windows down, jamming to country music and regularly stopping on the side of the road to watch the sun set. It used to look like holding hands every where we went; every chance we had.
Love threaded our hearts together as the summer yielded countless evenings of us nestled together in my family's porch swing beside the glowing embers of the fire pit. It revealed itself as we made plans for our future together: dreaming up days and expectations of cooking dinner with a baby on my hip, watching you play with the kids in the front yard, and sharing joy filled smiles as grandchildren piled on our laps. Love took shape the day you gave me your ring, and that day five months later when I took your last name.
But three years in, with so many promises and whispered dreams come true, it looks a little different than I expected.
Loving you looks like sneaking pictures (Ok, I'll admit. . .you catch me every time.) of you smiling into our babies' laughing eyes as your fingers gently dig into their sides. It looks like giving up on ever being showered and dressed by the time you arrive home from work because our children are the best stallers I have ever seen- one going down for a nap late while the other rises from theirs early. Loving you looks like playing the music louder to drown out our fussy baby as we attempt to just make it home; only to pull over in our favorite spot to nurse as our tenacious toddler begs for crackers once again. (If only the diaper bag had an endless supply that magically refilled itself.) And now, we have all but forgotten what if feels like to hold each other's hands. Because even though our hands are never empty, they are always filled with everyone and everything but each other.
Love struggles on as we pray that God holds all these threads together. Countless evenings pass with you in bed by 7, while I attempt to keep the kids quiet so you can get a good night's sleep before waking at 4 am. Having the time to sit and talk, uninterrupted by the rooaarrrs and vrooms of our toddler and endless grunts and squeals of the baby, happens so rarely it can be hard to keep dreaming. Sometimes, amidst the temper tantrums and hangry squalling, it's hard to even recognize we are already living a dream. But we are.
And this reality of loving you while I cook dinner with our daughter strapped to my chest, while we daily vacuum dog hair and cracker crumbs with a teary eyed toddler begging for his chance to push the vacuum along, while I wash and fold endless piles of laundry only to discover that none of your shorts are clean and I still have baby poop to scrub out of a couple of outfits discarded from two days ago. . . This reality sometimes looks a little different than what we dreamed up, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Because I love learning how to love you in all these seasons of life.
Photo credit: Studio MS Photography
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