20 Years

I remember looking at Geoff's face, in the fall of 1993, shortly before we got engaged, and thinking that his was likely the face that I would get used to seeing for the rest of our lives.  I specifically remember wondering what it would be like to see his face twenty years later, what our life together would look like then.

It was a strange thing to think - that his was the face.  I'd wondered for some time what that face would look like...and suddenly there it was.  It was a nice-looking face, I thought, but the strange thing was the contemplation of that face over any other.

We haven't always had an easy road, through his fault and my own, and because of life circumstance.  There have absolutely been times when his face has not been the one I've wanted to see in the morning, and I've no doubt that he's felt similarly.

But here we are.  Twenty years later.  Twenty years.  How does that happen?

We've weathered a lot.  We're still together, there's still this love between us, and there's still the commitment to seeing it through to the end...we know that now more than we did twenty years ago.

And that's saying something, because marriage is hard.  Next to raising kids, staying married is pretty much the hardest thing and the thing that makes us grow the most.  Yes, there's enjoyment and fun and love and joy and all of that good stuff.  But man is it hard work at times.  Although I believe that, as a people, we give up too easily on marriage at times, I understand why marriages fail...because Geoff and I have been surprised at times that there has been light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel.

I'm proud that we've made it twenty years...through the thick and the thin...through the everything.  I look at Geoff's face today, knowing all that I know, and it's a different experience entirely than in 1993 to say that his is the face I want to see for the next twenty years.