Bear with me here. If
you really can’t handle reading something longer then a tweet then here are the
cliff notes
Mary Jane = awesome
But for those of you who know me and know that twenty
characters will never be enough to encapsulate my thoughts on a subject, and
for those of you who care…go ahead and read the long version. It took me eight years of marriage to get to
this point, I think I am entitled to a few paragraphs to try and sum up how I
feel about it. That said, I won’t be
offended if you don’t read them. Unless
your name is Mary Jane Broge. Then my
feelings will be hurt.
This is where I write something about thanking God for the
most amazing wife anyone could ever have and everyone thinks it sweet, and some
people reading think its oddly public, and a few others realize they said the
same thing about their wife or husband on Facebook, or in their blog, or in
their anniversary card just a few days/weeks/months ago because…well, that is
what you are supposed to say, unless you are a cold heartless jerk. And while there are some people in the world
who firmly believe that I am indeed a cold heartless jerk, I tend to think I
probably am not and so of course I am going to say this too.
And yet it seems so inadequate. These words that are uttered by everyone
cannot possibly do justice to how I feel about Mary Jane, to how I feel about
our marriage.
But of course, that is how every young and in love couple
feels. When you meet that perfect
special soul mate the two of you instinctually know that nobody else has
really understood what love is, and nobody understands what the two of you have
and…. Rarely do you admit to feeling and
thinking this way, but everyone around you knows it, they hear it in your voice
the subtle “you wouldn’t understand.”
Eventually you wake up from this to understand that you aren’t the only
one to understand what love is, this has happened billions of times before and
will happen billions of times again (assuming Jesus doesn’t come again right
now….um…he hasn’t yet because I am still writing and you are still reading
so…..nope not yet, if he comes soon then that last sentence might not be true,
but for now…just go with it). It’s
nothing new. Your love is not unique, it
is quite common.
And this realization—once it has permeated your very being,
once you have truly experienced this realization and are not just parroting it
back because it is the right thing to say—is great. It is at this point you are ready to realize
that what you and your spouse have is utterly unique in the midst of its
commonness. It is true that there is no
up or down no high or low that is unique to your relationship. No matter how high the joy or how painful the
loss you aren’t the only one throughout the history of man to have had the
experience.
And yet…throughout out all of time, throughout all of those
similar experiences, it never happened to the two of you. It is still unique because it is your shared
experience and it is the sharing of those experiences and all the every day
little mundane ones in-between that has made both of you the unique people you
are. In the midst of the common and the
mundane you suddenly realize you really are unique, there really is something
shared between the two of you that no language can sum up and that no one will
ever fully understand. The best they can
hope to do is compare the similar experiences to their own-shared experiences,
but that will only ever be a shadow of what the two of you experienced because
your shared experience was shaped by all the experiences you shared before and
all the ones you had in preparation for meeting in the first place
In light of all of this, it just possible the clichés can
regain their meaning. It doesn’t matter
that everyone and their cousin has told their spouse on Facebook how wonderful
they are on their anniversary and how they are the best wife/husband ever, it
can still be said and it can still have meaning, because all those other times
were about them, and this time it is about us.
And so when I say to you, Mary Jane, that you are the
greatest gift God has ever given me and you are the perfect wife, and that
there could never ever be anyone else for me you don’t have to compare it to
the things other people say, there may be similarities, but none of them understand
those words the way we do. They have
their own understandings and we’ll leave them to it.
For me, I am just thankful that ten years ago I met
you. I am so incredibly thankful that a
month later you already knew me well enough to know, when nobody else would
have, that I was annoyed with you, and you knew why, and you called me on it
(for the record…I was wrong). I am
thankful for how well you knew the me of ten years ago, and I am blown away by
how much better you know the me of today, and I can’t wait to find out what it
is like eight years from now, or eighty—may we be so blessed.
I love that you are the mother of my children—they could
have no better mother. I love how fiercely
loyal you are, especially to family. I
love how passionate you are. I love how
smart and beautiful you are. I love so
very many things about you. But most of
all I love us. I love that that
your strengths compliment my weaknesses, and that my strengths compliment
yours. I love going through all life’s
greatest joys with you and I love that I am with you when I go through its
greatest pains. And I love that I get to
go through all of the middle times with you.
The mundane is less mundane when it happens with you.
I love sharing life with you, whether its talking about the
stresses of our day or reading stories to the girls or just finally getting
thirty minutes to ourselves after the girls have gone to bed and wasting them
in front of the tv, I love it all. I
would say that you are my best friend and better half, but those just do not
sum it up. It is so much more. I love being we, and life is better because
of it.
Thank you for saying yes when I asked you out, thank you for
saying yes when I proposed and thank you for saying I do.
I made a promise to you on our wedding day. No, I made a vow. And it is a vow I have cherished every day
since and will continue to cherish and keep long after I have been forced to
shuffle off this mortal coil. You are my
beautiful, and I love you. Happy
Anniversary.
PS I can’t wait to go
eat fondue
