My husband and me

Meet my husband and me...

After 13 years we are still in love.  However, it's not the love I imagined.  It's not the twitterpated, adoring, "I want to hold your hand at all times" kind of love that I loved seeing in the movies as a young girl.  Nope.  We have the sacramental, daily struggle, choosing to love by dying to self, "committed to never leaving you even though some days I'd like to" kind of love.  Oh it's hard. Harder than I ever imagined--ever.  But more rewarding too, perhaps the way a marathon runner must feel after a race.  Yes, my husband and me are in marathon love, racing and struggling every day for the finish line of heaven where we will finally be able to love each other perfectly.  To be honest, some days we want to quit.  Some days we fight.  Some days I cry.  Some days we want to throw our vows (and NFP--but that's a whole other topic!) out the window.  But we don't.  We are as different as two people could be.  He likes to shoot animals.  I like to take pictures of them.   He likes bitter beer.  I like sweet wine.  He is greying.  I am perpetually teenage-looking.  If he were a tree, he'd be a wise and sturdy oak.  I'd be a fragile weeping willow.  But we have one thing in common that holds us together when we feel like falling apart.  We are Catholic.  We love Jesus more than we love ourselves, more than we love each other, and somehow that gives us the grace to keep on loving each other.  How thankful I am for sacramental grace!  And how thankful I am that I married a Catholic long-distance runner who is in this marriage for the long haul.