Fifteen

You learn much about a woman over fifteen years. You learn even more if you add another four on top, the stretch of time it took me to buckle up my courage and stop acting the fool. When the time was right though, the courage rushed with a fury. I’ve been grabbing straight shots of 80-proof love ever since.

In those fifteen years, you learn that a woman needs you to clean up your pancake disarray as you go along, not after dinner’s done. You learn that when we’re in bed reading and she asks if I’m hungry, what she really means is: would you take your cute little self downstairs and make me some of your stovetop popcorn? You learn that asking her what she thinks of Schleiermacher’s pneumatology or Barth’s “strange world” after 9 p.m. is likely to get you nothing but a big ol’ roll of the eyes.

But you also learn that you’re welcome to quote poetry at any hour. You learn that tears cost her much but have a mighty power to heal those who receive them. You learn that true artists simply make beauty everywhere and half the time don’t even know they’re doing it. You learn that whenever she pulls out that orange-striped apron, watch out. She may start with paint and canvas, but when she’s done, all you’ll be able to say is my, my

In fifteen years, you learn what it is to give yourself to a woman, to know that she is your truest joy and truest pleasure. You also know, as much as you know a thing in this world, that you’ve only begun to scratch at her mystery, her allure.

 

winn and miska

7 Replies to “Fifteen”

  1. Firstly congratulations! WoW! Secondly and most important….it is sooo amazing to see a God~Centered marriage today. No matter how many years you can tell that God is the center of your marriage…know how? Because of her face…and the absolute JOY she is expressing in that photo. PRAISE GOD. May NO MAN tear apart what God has joined together. Again, congratulations!!

  2. While I am enraptured by the love of my life, a merciful gift from God, the wife of my youth, I am humbled by your ability to put the thoughts of your heart in words. You have a gift, my friend. Thank you for sharing it with us.

  3. Lovely, lovely. Congratulations to you both and best wishes for those years still to unfold. They will not all be wonderful – but in the big picture, they will all be good. 47 in three months – each of them gift, some of them incredibly hard and painful, all of them . . . together.

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