For better or worse

Happy 3rd anniversary to the finest man I know. It has been a wild ride so far. 3 years ago today, I stood on the hard-packed sand of a South Carolina beach, beneath the heat of a setting sun and 4 layers of crinoline, and vowed "in richer and poorer, for better or worse." And here we are...in the poorer and the worse part all at once. And still we find a way to smile. How incredible you are to bring joy to my life when I would be more inclined to cry. How fascinating it is to watch our marriage grow into something so complicated and yet stunningly so simple at the same time. I have never known a love so warm or so comfortable as I know with you. I can be who I am and still be completely entangled with you - like the vines that cover our patio. I know that someday we will, together and like those vines, provide shelter and shade for our family. Maybe these tears are just the watering that we need to grow. You can't have sunshine all the time, right? I've tried to give you the best and only gift I knew to give today: I got out of bed, I showered, and I got dressed. I found a way to do the things we used to do without letting grief saturate the day. And you allowed me the space for sadness when I needed it most. I could count all of the ways that I love you, but let's just start with a top 10. We would hate to burn through them all after just 3 years. What would I do for next year's post? Hopefully, I'll be too busy with the birth of our 2nd child, but just in case..here goes...

10) You found a way to make heart-shaped buttermilk biscuits from scratch.
9) When you came home from the pharmacy on Wednesday, you brought flowers - and then tried to tell me that the pharmacy was handing out flowers with prescriptions that day.
8) You set your alarm to wake me up when it was time to take more medication.
7) You have only watched about 2 hours of HGTV to my 60 hours of CNN and MSNBC.
6) You let your cell phone be our home phone for the past week, knowing that I couldn't bear to answer mine.
5) When all I could do was cry, you told me it was OK. And sometimes you cried, too.
4) When taking a bath seemed like an exhausting request, you cleaned the tub, ran the water, and then washed my hair. And then you cleaned the tub again.
3) Even though you lost a son too, you still found the strength to gather and pack up every onesie, pregnancy book, maternity shirt, and baby magazine you could find. In fact, you did that twice.
2) When I was in so much pain I couldn't sleep, you stayed up with me...drifting off only after I did.
1) In the past week, you have been the cook, the maid, the gatekeeper and a soft place to land. How you managed it all I will never know, but I will also never forget.

Happy Anniversary, handsome! I am the luckiest girl in the world.