Ten years.

If we’re blessed enough to greet sixty,
this is one of only six parts
of an entire marriage.

My grandparents made it past fifty.
Your parents nearly forty.
Mine over thirty.

One of five.
One of four.
One of three.

Ten years.

Our ring bearers and flower girls are in high school now, which is impossible to believe. Just yesterday they were children playing dress-up in silver and pink.

Our two became five. Three boys with pieces of me and pieces of you spread out between them, betraying our age with so much more life than we could have possibly dreamed.

Ten years.

When we started this thing we walked into a forever – ten years itself looked a lot like forever – but, oh, life has taught me it’s not.

It’s a breath.
A heartbeat.
A whisper in this life that we share,
That will undoubtedly come much quicker,
The next time around.

Ten years.

Of knowing you and loving you,
Are simply not enough.

And I look forward to the next ten,
and the ten after that,
and the ten after that,
and as many tens as God will give us.

Because you are my life’s gift,
and I will love you every ten through.