2011 - Talk Birth

in brilliance more stern and starlike
and vastly more magnificent
than the ribbons and confections
we had planned for that day.
She blessed us as she passed,
toward her waiting bridegroom
in the unadorned steadfastness of her love,
and in the wake of that radiance
we turned to one another,
a silent hymn of faces
now wet with more than rain,
having glimpsed in that lambent bride
the flaming sun heart of human love.
Small, fallible, mortal,
we could not have dreamt or designed such a day.
It was Perfection.
——-
I read this poem every year on our anniversary and it makes me cry every time! Before we got married,
people would say things in semi-ominous tones like, ”just wait. After you get married, everything changes.”
We still laugh about this—nothing changed except for that it felt really fun to be married instead of just
dating :)
I occasionally read articles that say things like, ”marriage is lots of hard work” or, ”parenting and
marriage are both very, very tough.” I’ve truly never felt like our marriage was hard work. And, while I
daily feel that parenting is tough and emotionally very complicated, I would never describe my relationship
with my husband as ”tough” or difficult in any way. I actually feel like he is my oasis of calm, peace, and
love in what sometimes feels like lots of chaos. He is steady and even and I always feel as if I can be
completely and totally real with him—there is no feeling or thought or experience that is too awful to share
with him. He has seen the places where the ”[2]meat has been chewed off my bones” and he still says I’m the
greatest person in the world. So, while it is fully possibly that being married to ME is tough—I’m pretty
intense—being married to him is not. It is gentle and sweet and whole.
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