6 Years

Today My Love and I round out 6 year of marriage.  6 years!  That's longer than I was in high school for.

We did most of our celebrating yesterday because he has to work today.  But I did save one thing for today.

A long, long while ago we made a pie in the sky plan that every 5 years of marriage we would celebrate our anniversary with a big trip.  We started by celebrating our honeymoon (3 years late!) in Bali.  And then last year we went to New Zealand.  A week doesn't go by that we don't talk about how much we loved it.  So to commemorate our 5th anniversary on our 6th anniversary I made Joel a poster of our trip, printed it up and framed it.  We both love it.  And I might make a smaller one from our Bali trip too so we really have the start of collection.

Joel's gift (the digital version of it since taking a photo of it framed is harder than doing the dishes today and I'm certainly not doing that):

Last night we went out for tapas at The Lounge for dinner and dessert.  I think we ate more dessert than all the dinner together! During dinner I pulled out an envelope and some pens.  I had prepared a little anniversary activity for us to work on during dinner.  Each of us had a page titled 'Six Things: for our sixth anniversary' and under that were 4 (not 6!) sentences to be completed 6 times:

Six things I love about you... 

Six of my favourite memories of our relationship so far...

Six things I hope and pray for us...

Six things you do that make me smile...

We secretly filled out our own pages over dinner then during dessert read them to each other, laughed at how many were similar or straight out the same and grinned a lot at how loved and blessed we both felt.  When we were done with that and almost done with dessert Joel pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket.  I wasn't expecting anything from him because we'd been ring shopping early in the week for my gift (!!  oh, and his other gift too!).  

But out comes this piece of paper with my name on it.  "What is this is??" I asked him.  "Just a reflection on Song of Songs 4:10-5:1 that I wrote for you" he says.

The first tears came with the first line and continued all the way to the end.  It is entirely beautiful, heartfelt, romantic and wonderful.  A girl could not feel any more loved.  I will treasure that poem for ever.  I gave him my gift of art and he gave me his gift of words.  

Joel, I know I've said it a thousand times and I promise to say it a million more but just for today I want the world to know too - I love you.  The words are little but the emotion, the feeling and the promise are the biggest.  The very, very biggest.  I love you.

6 years.  We can do everything through him who gives us strength. xxx