10 years ago today, I wept as I walked down the aisle to you. I didn’t have tears glistening in my eyes. I didn’t just let a solitary tear drop down my cheek. I wept.
I wept long and hard, a gasping for breath type of cry, as I took that short walk on the arms of my father and step-father…walking to you at the end. I later said they were tears of joy but that wasn’t entirely true.
As I walked down the aisle on our wedding day, I wept for every moment in my life when I felt ugly or fat or gigantic because at that moment I felt beautiful in your eyes. And I knew at some base level of my soul that I was glimpsing myself as the beautiful child of God who had been there all along.
I wept that day for every time I felt lost or abandoned, for every time I felt alone in the world. Because I knew from that minute on I would never have to be alone again. Because I knew, as a Truth with a capital T, that you would never leave me. And that even if death separated us, our love would always sustain me.
I wept that hot, muggy August Saturday because I had finally found a place where I fit. And that was with you. After a lifetime of always explaining where I belonged and how I belonged there and continuously feeling ‘other than’, I cried tears of relief that I had found a home in you.
I cried on my wedding day all the tears I had held in over the years because I didn’t think I deserved to cry them, because I didn’t think I deserved to feel sad and alone. I cried for all the disappointments and frustrations and unspeakable pain I went through in past relationships. I would go through them all again…Every.Single.One…if I knew you waited for me at the end.
I wept on our wedding day because I was letting go of a lifetime of thinking that love wouldn’t find me. Love did find me. You found me. And I was so grateful. I am so grateful. I will forever be grateful.
Ten years ago today, I stood up with you in front of our closest family and friends at the Swan Coach House in Atlanta and promised to love and cherish and honor you. I looked at you that day, knowing our lives would now forever be linked to each other, and I was filled with the kind of joy that bubbled up out of my soul and spilled over into every fiber of my body.
I still feel that joy. I still feel that love. I still am so grateful to be your wife.
And I’m proud to be your wife too. I’m proud of the man you’ve grown into. I’m proud our union produced four children who now call us mom and dad. I’m so proud of the family we created that day 10 years ago.
Thank you for letting me weep on our wedding day, and for helping me smile so many of the 3,650 days since then.
Happy 10th Anniversary!
Maria
