It wasn’t any secret when we met that I have a mind of my own and a will that is as strong as iron. We had barely begun when you said goodbye to me at the gate and trusted in our new love to carry us through months spent continents apart. A year into our marriage there was another month spent in which I said my “I love yous” through emails sent from internet cafes a world away.
You never once complained but rather gave wings to my dreams. I couldn’t have gone had I not known you were the home I would return to.
My love for the big wide world is as much a part of me as my love for you. I cannot separate the two any more than bone and marrow. There is nothing I love more than when we get to explore it together.
My hair has faded over the years from a fiery red to more muted tones but the stereotypical fire of a redhead in me hasn’t faded one bit. I walk the fine line between wanting so badly to please everyone and being just rebellious enough to let others know I won’t fit into a mold they have defined for me. And you never seem to mind, either my stubbornness and strong will or my anxiety over what others think. I don’t know how you do it, but you always make me feel like I am doing just the right thing and that you will love me no matter what.
Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder how your quiet strength and my wandering spirit find such a fit in each other.
When I am a tempest you are the shore that brings the violent surges of the sea to a halt upon the rocks. I have these big dreams that can’t be contained and you let me dream them, aren’t threatened by their ability to rock our world sometimes. You just remain, this constant force of faith and peace when everything else seems to be spinning.
When my mind won’t slow down, won’t accept on faith that God will provide or that one of my crazy dreams could actually succeed – there you are. You believe in me when I can’t believe in myself. You hold me up with faith when mine gets rocky.
You saw the fire burning in me and have never once tried to quench it. You show up with a can of gasoline and ignite it again when I get weary, when the words won’t come or believing anymore seems too big. Yet not even I never dreamed of the places God has taken, the way our dreams became one and changed with the seasons of life over the past ten years.
Thank you, love, for the way you give me wings but also tether me to the home we have made together, the beautiful family God has given us. Thank you for never giving up on me when I probably would have. Thank you for your quiet faith, the way you listen to all my words like each one matters, for the prayers I know you hold up for me.
Thank you for showing me what it really means to lay your life down for another – the way you lay yours down for me every single day. I love you.
“When all the world is spinning ‘round
Like a red balloon way up in the clouds
And my feet will not stay on the ground
You anchor me back down.”
-Mindy Gledhill
Love,
