Cheers to Fourteen Years!!

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Dear Mark, 

I’ve just finished watching one of my chick flicks, and Bridget Jones said something that resonated deep within me.  (Not at all who I expected to get marital wisdom from, but, oh well!)  She said, “Sometimes you love a person for all the ways they’re different from you.  Sometimes you love someone just because they feel like home. “

I know that we approach life so differently.  We don’t often react to situations the same way or go about things at the same pace or with the same motivations.  And that gets hard.  In my Hollywood ‘romantic comedy’ fantasy world, I want us to be in unison always, to understand each other’s hearts and flirt in a constant state of relational bliss.  

But…that’s RomCom...not real life.  

Real life doesn’t follow a script or always give us goosebumps or that lump-in-your-throat feeling when everything works out perfectly.  It sometimes is a tense, silent stand off - both of us behind our heavy shields of pride and fear.  It sometimes is a teetering whisper of what might be in the midst of the disconnect felt in the present moment.  It sometimes takes grit, sometimes patience, always a loosening of our white-knuckled grip on all things self.  

It’s a struggle to upturn expectations of picture-perfect romance and happy endings, and instead choose to look back on the joys and growth the journey has presented.  To appreciate the beauty in the commitment.  

The commitment to strive.  To struggle.  To stay.  

And in looking back, to see the intertwining, the give and take, the woven story that is uniquely us.  Not me.  Not you.  But us.  

A wonderful us.  So different from each other, yet wonderful together.  We feel like home to me. 

Happy Anniversary, Mark.  Thank you so much for your love and commitment to me and our family.  What a beautiful journey it has been so far.  

Love, 
Sarah













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