Anniversaire Toi

I was learning French when we started this, three years ago, the summer before my senior year of college.  I was stringing together most likely incorrect phrases like “Tu et le garçon qui je (You are the man whom I)…. Want, love, value, desire, hoped for.

I ardently believed all those things as I walked up to the alter to recite the vows like so many have done.  I vowed to love, honor and cherish in sickness and health, plenty and want, the traditional, time-honored words that centuries before have spoken.  The things, which at the time seemed most important.

However if I got to re-write them with the sage-ness acquired in a short three years, I would be certain to add a few.

I Katie, take you Nathaniel, to be my wedded husband. To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, in plenty, and in want, in sickness or in health, in sin and shame, in hurt feelings and botched apologies, in trust and in doubt, in triumph and in utter and complete failure, in beauty and in tears, in moments of great passion and times of apathy, with grace instead of judgment, to love, to cherish and to respect, with the smiles, breath, tears of all my life, 'till death do us part and the clock itself wears thin its time.

Those are the things I’ve gleaned in three years of learning to fight well and love even better. I’m immeasurably thankful for the gift that is being your wife.  Happy Anniversary my husband, Mon amour.