waiting for love...

i'm single. i'm young & single. i used to say that with much dismay, but now i am happy to be single... for now : ) being single has allowed me to learn so much about myself & explore the person God created me to be without too many distractions. but i can't wait, & am very hopeful, for the day when it's my turn to meet the man God has set aside for me. to be married to the man i've been waiting for.

my mother... knowing me oh so well : ) ... gave me the article below that she found in the charlotte observer last week. it sat on my desk for a few weeks, but i picked it up yesterday & read it & it just made me realize that this is the love i'm waiting for. the adventure lies ahead & i will wait patiently on the Lord until that day arrives. i hope you enjoy this article as much as i did! (it's a tad long, but please take a few minutes to read the whole thing... i think you'll be glad you did)

-aw

how do i love thee?

let me count the days

-tommy tomlinson

10 years ago today, Alix & I got married. We said the vows & exchanged the rings and kissed right there in front of God & our friends at the State Museum down in Columbia.

If I'm counting the leap years right, we've been married 3,653 days.

It feels like about 30 minutes.

Love does that to time. When you're in love you can make a goodbye kiss last all weekend. You can stretch a lazy Saturday morning into something close to forever.

And you can wake up next to the same person for the three thousandth time & feel the same leap in your heart from when it was all brand new.

I wrote a column that ran on our wedding day, & it's by far the most popular column I've ever done. What i tried to say that day was - well, here's a piece of it:

The point of this is not to brag about my good fortune. It is simply to say that no matter how lonely you are, no matter how much you think you've missed your chance, there is hope, always hope, everlasting hope.

That's more true than ever 10 years down the line.

alix & I are a normal married couple, which means sometimes we drive each other crazy. She has a mild addiction to the snooze alarm. I spend Sunday afternoons watching football & scratching myself. She clings to stacks of 5-year-old magazines. The top of my dresser could qualify for federal disaster relief.

We give each other grief about these things, but at the core they are minor flaws. If you watched much "Seinfeld" you figured out that it was really a tragedy, because Jerry could not bring himself to love someone who talked too low or ate her peas one at a time. don't let the little things keep you from love.

Like anyone else we both have deeper issues, the things that only the two of us know, and on those we have vowed to help each other through. Life is a trapeze, and part of love is saying I don't care if you do a triple somersault with a twist, don't worry, I'll catch you.

We have been places - the top of the Space Needle, the snowy sidewalks of New York City, a Caribbean island with only us and a thousand iguanas.

But when i think about Alix I don't think about those times. I think about our legs tangled together on the couch as we read books with candles burning. I think about long drives where I prop my arm on her shoulder and she leans into it with her cheek.

I think about all those times when we leave somewhere and walk outside & reach for each other's hands, as natural as seedlings bending toward light.

We have done a lot in10 years, but love is all those moments that connect the dots, the times when you are folding the laundry or doing the taxed and still you have this strange giddy feeling because you are in the place you belong with the person you love.

I was 34 when we got married, and Alix was 36, and we were wondering if it would ever happen for us. It did. And a decade later it is still happening, one grand & lucky day after another, as long as we both shall live.