Grace, Compassion and Twenty Years of Marriage

June 4, 1994

Married 20 years ago to this day and so full of hope, meeting my beloved at the end of a curvy aisle in an art gallery surrounded by beautiful art and friends and family.

For better or worse. Never knowing what was ahead, we had dreams for us, dreams for our future children.

Twenty years ago those dreams didn’t involve diseases or organ donors or depression and suicide. It didn’t involve fighting for basic rights for our future kids or crying on dirty kitchen floors in an embrace from the overwhelming despair that only comes from watching your children suffer.

The dreams I had didn’t involve people who wanted to hurt my kids’ little souls or hurt our family, our marriage. That day I imagined we could survive massive amounts of pain and sorrow, even if I didn’t think we would have to face massive amounts of anything but love.

The marriage I got was full of good times and bad times, of tears and compassion. It’s a marriage of shock, surprise, of patience and understanding. We’ve survived more than our fair share, but we’ve seen and felt more than our fair share of love and support and hope. We’ve had to experience humor to give us relief and luckily we found the humor, together. Always together.

We’ve learned love isn’t enough. Love, for sure is not enough to get you through the hard times. You need humor and patience. You need an abundance of grace and compassion and sometimes you need those things for each other and sometimes for yourself.

Twenty years and we’re still here holding our family together with hope and love, which are the same sentiments we had that Saturday on a hot June, Atlanta day. All of these years later and we have an amazing amount of dreams of the future, still to this day.