One Drop in the Romance Bucket

As of today, Melanie and I have been married for three years. You would probably expect me to follow that sentence with some sort of romantic sentiment, expressing just how much love I have for my wife or how the last three years have been the greatest of my life. But what I really want do is laugh. Three years? It seems absolutely absurd. Ridiculous!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do love my wife, and the last three years have made the previous 27 years of my life seem relatively insignificant in comparison. So much of my identity today is being a husband and a father. I consider it a monumental blessing that I can say this. What a wonderful identity to have! But I can hardly believe that the depth of these roles extends back only three years. How can that be? Three years is nothing! How is it possible that I was not Edison’s dad three years ago? How could Peter not have been around just six months ago??? These are incredibly bizarre facts for my mind to make sense of. But certainly nothing out-boggles the mind like the fact that Melanie and I have been married a mere three years—that three years and one day ago, Melanie was not my bride!

Here are some further reasons that a three-year marriage sounds so laughable:

1. Melanie has now occupied a full 33% of my life, a pretty cool fact given that I’m not really all that old.
2. As she herself recently noted, Melanie has celebrated my last ten birthdays with me. Wow!
3. Melanie and I knew each other back in the 20th century, for crying out loud!
   

Is it any wonder that three years sounds so silly?

My dearest Melanie, I hope you know how much you mean to me. I hope you know how much I appreciate and admire your commitment to our love and happiness, and how much you selflessly invest into making joy a daily reality in our home. I hope you know the influence that your values and priorities have on us as a family, making every one of us a better and happier person because of you. I hope you know the awe and reverence I feel toward you as I watch you somehow becoming more and more perfect as time goes on. And I hope you will forgive me if the thought of a three year anniversary makes me want to break into hysterics.

Happy anniversary, MelanieMine. I love you endlessly!