My wife Melissa is truly the person that God has put on this earth for me. She has stood by me for the past three and half years of our courtship and marriage through obstacles and turmoil that would have sent a lesser woman running for the hills. Through it al,l I believe her faith in God and the beauty and wonderment of marriage has kept her faithful not only to me but to our future. You see, my wife sees into me. She doesn’t see the me that I am, (though she loves that broken man) she sees the man that I have the potential to become. My wife understands that the only reason that a good woman is behind every good man is because that’s the perfect place to push him to the purpose and greatness that he has lying dormant inside him. Boy does she push!!
I married a woman who has an affinity for competition. Understand, when I say competition I mean any sport or contest that calls for two or more sides to face one another and one victor to emerge. Recently, I sat quietly as my small 5’2” statured beautiful wife armed with a 12 gauge shotgun shot clay pigeons out of the sky after barking pull! A strange blend of fear and eroticism overcame me as the brightly colored “pigeon’s” were obliterated by wife’s rifle and the men on her team cheered on her perfect and deadly aim.
A well spoken, opinionated, dainty, rough and tough United States Marine agreed to offer her emerald-green eyes for me to get lost in and her hand for me to marry on Valentine’s day in 2006. I would be lying if I said every day was roses, actually I wouldn’t be lying I would be ignoring the fact that many of those roses were well protected with razor sharp thorns. The word divorce was uttered more than once as we felt one another out testing the bonds of our union and questioning the other’s motives for doing “it” again. Shouldn’t it be easier this time? We’re older this time around and wiser right? We aren’t enamored with the idea of love pass the point of reason like we were when we were younger. We understand that love is more than poems, holding hands and lust…right? Wrong!
I believe every single person in this world wants the fairytales that we pay millions for in the form of movies, books, poetry and music. Otherwise, why would stories of prostitutes being loved for who they are by rich business men or a man living on one side of the country falling in love with a woman from the other side be so fantastic to us? We love the idea of love; we love the idea that love is a fall, a stumble from our normal lives and rational thinking. Love is an edification of a side of us that life tends to dumb down with our problems. Love brings hope and the freshness and newness of a cool wind or warm spring day. Love returns us to a place that, as infants, it was the only currency we had to attain the necessities of life. No child ignores the power and magnitude a smile or a hug has on even the grumpiest and stingiest of grown ups!
Love, most of all, is promise. Unfortunately that promise can often times be overstated or completely broken. I believe in love but as I mature I also understand that love is a multi-paged contract that is well equipped with fine print and corporate verbiage that can easily be overlooked. The words, “I love you” are so powerful that just the utterance can return hope to the hopeless or leave the betrayed forever bewildered. “You said you loved me!” Three words that are so complex in their meaning that any action that can be viewed as a deviation from their intent is an automatic breach.
I've loved in the past and to be perfectly honest, not very well. I've perpetuated the idea that love is selfish and unless my needs are being met, love is worthless. The reality, of course, is that love in its truest form is the most selfless act that exists. To say I love you means that I forsake myself for you. "You" become my obsession and "Love" becomes my motivation. "I" is nothing more than a directional term that helps me to stay on course. I thank God everyday for the turmoil I have felt by my own hands and my own unwillingness to understand love and the power that it has. I thank God for this because because without those tears, I would not appreciate and bask in the utter joy that I feel right now...
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