Thirty (posted Aug 28, 2009)

Today my husband turns thirty. Thirty. I remember when we met and I was 18 and he was 20. Such a long time ago yet it seems like yesterday. We met as mere babes and have spent the last decade growing up together. Growing up, and growing older, and changing. Our changes are nothing short of incredible. We used to pull all-nighters to study for mid-terms and to fight like passionate idiots, now we pull all-nighters to nurse our little boy’s cold and soothe him back to sleep after nightmares. Cafeteria food three meals a day, paid for by our parents, have been replaced by home cooked meals paid for by us. The days when what we worried most about was "how are we going to survive being apart for an entire summer?" have been replaced by "how are we going to survive in this crazy world on our own?" We have moved over 1800 miles together and made our way to the Wild West, bought our own house and started our own family. My hair has grown 18 inches since we first met and my heart has grown right along with it. I owe that to him, for the only thing bigger than my husband’s physique is his heart- his tender, all consuming heart. He is the kind of man that won’t watch the news and read headlines of murder and incest because it is too raw. Too real. Too cruel. He is a feeler and I, I am a thinker who needs to work on the feeling. He is the meat to my potatoes, and he has balanced me out and taught me to laugh again even when that is the last thing in the world I wanted to do.


Over the last decade we have been there for each other. We have cursed the “Man” for keeping us down and praised God for blessing us with a baby boy. We have learned to trust and believe in each other even when we haven’t believed in ourselves. We have been each other’s best friends and biggest fans. Turning 30 doesn’t mark the end of anything or the beginning either, because we continue. We continue the journey we started so long ago; the journey of growing up and every year we get a little wiser and, true, a little older. But he will always have my love, my passion, my honesty, and my heart no matter how old we get. I cannot wait to see what the next decade holds and where his 40th birthday will find us.