Life is Like a Song

Wow. How fast time has flown by. It seems like just a couple months ago Nic and I stood in front of one another, our family, our friends and our Lord, reciting our marriage vows to one another. Vows we made for the rest of our lives. But here we are, one year later. One year more in love.

Of course, all this week, Nicole and (especially) I have been more nostalgic and cheesy. Saying all the usual lovey dovey things to one another. Asking the usual inquisitive romantic questions, like, "What are your favorite memories so far," or "Has it been what you were expecting?"

To answer the latter question first, it's been better than we were expecting. I mean, we both had high expectations, but our first year of marriage has been so much more fun, easy, joyous, exciting and blessed than we could have ever expected or hoped for. God truly knew what He was doing when He brought us together. While we know it won't always be an easy road, we're thankful that the mountains are more like plateaus and the valleys more like brief dips.

Now, the first question was one we smiled about as we thought of our individual responses and eventually answered each other. Obviously, the big memories make the list, like our honeymoon, the holidays, finding out Nicole was pregnant, summer vacation, shopping for our baby when we found out "it" was a "she," the birth of Riley, and so on. But it's not just those that make marriage so wonderful. Rather, it's the little things. It's the fact that even one year later, my wife still blesses me by packing me lunches and writing funny and never-repeated names for me on the brown paper bags; today I'm "one righteous dude," in honor of Ferris Bueller. They're the memories of me looking forward to coming home every Friday night for us to go enjoy our date night. It's the memory of our weekends sleeping in together, curled up under the covers playing footsies. Memories of me getting to care for my pregnant wife when she felt nauseous. They are joyful, beautiful, even "small" treasured memories that constitute my answer to that seemingly simple question.

And now, here we are. We can actual answer in years instead of months when asked how long we've been married.

On the night of our anniversary, after a weekend of celebrating, Nicole brilliantly decided we should start an annual tradition: dancing to our wedding ceremony's first song. Holding each other and slowly spinning in our bare feet to Etta James' At Last, I lost myself in Nicole's arms and quietly leaning on the song's lyrics:

At last
My Love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song...

How true those words are. Thank you, Nicole, my love, my wife, my best friend, my hero, my lover, my desire, my better half for making them true. For everything. Especially for saying, "I do."