You

Seeing past my mistakes and into who I really am. Being real and true to who you are. Taking the time and the chance to get to know me. Being vulnerable and sharing your faith.

Taking another chance to form a friendship. Taking me and my unusual ways in stride. Filling the loneliness within both of us, but carefully. Teaching me patience and reviving trust within me. Seeing me broken and discovering that pieced together, we are whole.

Causing me to become deeply and irrevocably and wholly in love with you. Discovering that being yours is so far beyond any theory or example or idea I had about what love is supposed to be. Being willing to need and want you all the time- and to see this as a rich blessing rather than a weakness. To be soothed by your hands and to sleep soundly in your arms.

Seeing you befriend, revere and love each of my children uniquely. Watching them love and trust and believe in you. Hearing them proudly and unabashedly welcome you as my husband and their step dad. Knowing that you would protect them as your own. We are your own. As you are ours.

Knowing that nothing else compares to what we are together.

You are the strength in my lungs and my stride. You are the courage and the will to continue. You are who I will always run home to. I am blessed beyond measure with you- I am always in awe of what we have and how my world has changed because you are with me. Any hardship, any challenge, any reluctance can be conquered because I know that when it's over my greatest reward is not the sense of accomplishment, or any medal, or a personal record. It is that no matter how long and how difficult and how impossible the miles may seem, the road always starts and always ends with you.