There was a day when you shared little things- like the first time you locked eyes, like the unspoken friction as you spoke…the way you were shy and tried so hard to pretend you weren’t hanging on every glance, every word, every quickening heartbeat. 

There was a time where you placed “firsts” in the pockets of your heart…firsts like holding hands on walks after dark. The first dance when you were surrounded by people,and there wasn’t even music, but it didn’t matter. The first time you sat next to eachother at church and your knees touched.  Receipts from lunch at the Safeway Deli, tickets to movies, and the note left on a  windshield with a flower picked from a neighbor’s yard. Kisses in an old Red Toyota Celica. 

There was a place where you learned the ugly parts, the parts you couldn’t hide from this person who said they loved you …red hot jealousy over past loves. The time where anxiety was so overpowering you had to sit in the car, rather then meeting their friends. Fighting over petty little things, and learning to listen, and choosing to not be passive aggressive. 

There was a space you began to share the little things…the parts of your history that were painful, but filled in the parts of you that hadn’t made sense. Suddenly his space was your space, and you didn’t know where you ended and he began. He gave you his name, and you wore his ring. 

There was a day when you threw up teaching a class. And suddenly things changed. And He swung you around and around when you told him. And then you threw up again. That day you found out that everything you’d shared so far, didn’t even compare to the moment you knew that you were going to be parents. 

There was a time when each of them was placed in your arms. Where you saw their bright eyes blink, and their first yawn. And in those moments you had no idea what you were going to do, how on earth you would ever be good enough, but knew they were they most beautiful things you’d ever seen. And you got to be a part of their existence. 


There was a place where you held each other, legs wound tightly, crying until your chest hurt–holding your first daughter born sleeping. Where you placed your lips on feverish foreheads, and stared bleary eyed at each other over empty cups of coffee. When you only had six hours of sick leave left, and youngest was just diagnosed with pneumonia and another kidney infection. 

There was a space where you tried to balance work that you couldn’t leave there, and a house full of  little faces that kept changing…and still find time for each other. In the middle of all the penciled in schedules, there was never enough groceries but an excess of laundry and bills. And somedays you didn’t even get to hear the others voice.

There was a day when you realized that you had been together more than half your lives, that all your big and small memories ran together. And times could be so hard that you couldn’t remember the days where your heart beat fast and you’d held hands… and you felt too much distance at the table, in the conversations, and between you in bed. 

There was a time when it would have been easy to rationalize all the things that didn’t work, and yet all the important stuff you’d lived was together. Your memories were tangled and even though you knew all the ugly mess the other could bring, they were your person.  

There was a place in life where you traveled side by side, bound by vows, and children, and memories…but so much more. Little things like the way you interlocked your hands without thinking, or the way you both just knew how to make the other one laugh. Together you are Home.

There was a space where you found intimacy was watching your husband dry off your incision after a c section, and whispering with you at night as two child lay between you. Where you had laugh lines, and grey sprinkles across temples, and your children are taller than you but still asked you to pray with them at night…together. 

And you just knew. 

Any day, any time, any place, any space…I choose you. 

I choose this. 

I choose all of it. 

…to God be the glory. 
* photography by k Dimoff photography