Wedding Anniversary

Today is our 9-year wedding anniversary. The years have gifted us a joy and fulfillment like none other that I've known. The Sacrament of Marriage is truly a blessing, like water on a dry, dusty soul. It's a place to seek comfort, find acceptance, discover self, relinquish self, give and grow. The love shared is profound. Not only does marriage possess romantic love, but a love much greater than ourselves, a sacrificial and unconditional love whose roots can only be from that which is Holy.

"'Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.' -- Saint-Exupery. For in fact, man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction; they are working outward. Here the bonds of marriage are formed. For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage, many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic love first, then a slow-growing devotion and , playing through these, a constantly rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies and shared experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance of lack of language too; a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions, both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day-to-day living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction. It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself." -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea