I really don’t feel old enough to be celebrating a 10 year wedding anniversary today.  I surely look old enough, but my husband still looks like a college student.  Ten years ago today my high school sweetheart and I said “I do”.  It was the perfect sunny May day, with nearly 450 guests, two receptions and lots of dancing.

I recently found my old journal from high school and these are the words (verbatim) I penned in spring of 1995:

My head was turned in the direction of a certain Chris Strovas.  We were friends so I called him 2 weeks before the April 1 Loyalty Tolo Dance and asked him to go with me.  He said yes.  After the dance we went over to Holley’s house and we watched movies for a while.  We fell asleep and then all the sudden it was 6 AM so Chris went home.  When he left I walked him out to the car (I was staying the night at Holley’s).  He kissed me (REALLY kissed me) and it was quite nice!  I walked back in the house in a daze…

I still remember barely being able to walk up the stairs after he drove away.  Though that kiss was not my first, or second or…you get the idea. But it was unlike any other.  And our relationship continued in that manner because a few months later I wrote these words as a smitten 16 year old girl:

He treated me different that any guy I’d ever known.  He held me in the highest respect.  Chris made me feel like I was his most precious, valuable princess.  He always could make me smile and feel so special.  Each moment we’ve spent together is so precious.  A few weeks ago he took me out to Denny’s.  He was nervous acting, twiddling with sugar packets.  He told me he’d thought a lot about it and he realized he loved me.  Hearing those words come off the lips I adored was something I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear.  He is the first guy who has truly held my heart in his hands.

There is so, so much more to the story.  We didn’t get married for 4 years after that.  But we finally did.  It was easy then to whisper sweet words to each other, to kiss on the front porch, to write letter after letter proclaiming our love for each other.  It was easy to forgive.  Easier to make time for one another.  Life was pretty simple and pretty perfect really.  We have weathered many hard seasons since then.  Ones that involved us and ones that didn’t but broke our hearts anyway.   We have traveled and been on countless adventures together.  Four years into our marriage we welcomed our first baby and we were forever changed in a moment.  We had never before been so afraid as we were during those first days of Rylee’s life and we had never cared so much for anyone else.

Falling in love, marrying Christopher and spending the last 10 years together has been God’s gift to me.  I remember feeling like it was too much, too good, too lofty for me to even dream of as I pined away for him during our college years.  So it was only natural that the vows I wrote to recite on our wedding day began like this:

“Christopher, I stand in awe of the incredible gift God has given me in you…”

I am blessed beyond measure to be married to a man who loves Jesus, who cherishes me, who adores our children and who is willing to work (hard) to provide for us.  I am looking forward to many more years with the dreamy, patient and devoted boy that won my heart before I could even drive a car.