867-5309

June 25, 1998

If love is a choice, why did you decide to love your mate?

Was he your first love? Was it an arranged love?  Was he your last chance at love…or so you thought? Did it sneak up on you like a gen­tle breeze or did it bowl you over like a tor­nado?    Why did you choose to love your spouse?

I remem­ber when I first “felt in love” with J. We were dri­ving back from some­thing late at night and we were dri­ving in silence. I was com­fort­able with it.  That’s it. No tin­gle in the belly. No rush of heat to my face. Just a real­iza­tion that I felt com­pletely at peace around him.  That was not a feel­ing that was nor­mal for me.

J and I are about as oppo­site as a cou­ple can be.  The only thing we have in com­mon is our love for laugh­ter.  And we do that a lot.  I can look back at our most rock­i­est times and see those were times where we lacked laugh­ter.  There wasn’t much humor and friv­o­lity in our mar­riage dur­ing those times.  If any­thing we had to be care­ful of our sar­cas­tic bites.  We plowed through though; with the help of a very car­ing God.

I also remem­ber when I choose to love J.  Sadly enough it was after we had been mar­ried for awhile.  Even though I got mar­ried at 26, I might as well have been 18 by the way I viewed mar­riage.  I guess I just assumed love was going to make it all wine and roses day in and day out.  What a silly girl.  I real­ized that we were two peo­ple brought up in two dif­fer­ent cul­tures and we clashed!  If I wanted to make this mar­riage work I had to choose to love J with my whole I’m-never-giving-up being.

J has helped me love him dispite my many, many mis­giv­ings.  He’s taught me how to give and for­give, love and fight right, be strong yet a total mush pot (ok…I’m still work­ing on the mush pot thing).

On Feb­ru­ary 14, 1998, J asked me to be his wife, part­ner, and lover.  Of course I said, “It’s about frig­gin’ time Yes.” And 4 months later he held me still long enough to say, “I do”. I was a tad bit nervous…and afraid I was going to bolt.  I’m so glad I didn’t.