I’m not sure I even have words for the day we said “I do,” so I’ll let the video, pictures, and our vows speak for themselves…
219 days ago you opened the door, and I still can’t explain it, but in that moment I knew that everything was going to be okay, that my heart was somehow going to heal. The days since have been full of more love and joy than I even thought was possible.
Six months in, you thanked me for standing at the edge of the water with you, holding your hand, scary as it was and wading in. But I feel like I should be the one thanking you…for stitching up wounds I didn’t think could ever be healed, for choosing me and this even though it wasn’t always easy and the cost was high…I should be thanking you for making all of my days brighter. Just getting to go to sleep with you every night and wake up with you every morning is so much more than I ever thought I deserved…and when I think about all the other moments of the day, doing dumb chores together or planning meals for our family, or cleaning the kitchen for the eighteenth time…my heart overflows with gratitude and love. Every day is better because I get to spend it with you, and I am so glad we get to spend the rest of forever together.
I think I gave my heart to you the moment you opened the door…and again dancing at that little beach beer garden…and in the car on the way home from North Carolina…and in your closet the first time you asked me to marry you…and standing on the beach in washington…and shopping for beds at ikea…and at least a thousand other times every single day.
I promise to keep giving you my heart, every day forever…to always be a soft place for you to land…to love you, when it’s easy and when it’s hard…and to never not be absolutely amazed at the fact that you love me so perfectly and that we get to spend all of our days together.
Always. Forever. No matter what.
This thing that we call safe, the most safe, is actually maybe the biggest risk either of us has ever taken…
We’ve talked so many times about that time we met ten years ago, and the moment you walked in the door again this March – the seeing and the knowing and every moment in between in this story we’re writing. And I’ll never get tired of trying to help you explain how we fell in love.
We sat on the brink of destruction one night, a mess of tears and anger and sorrow. And you said we could write a different story together. I promise to do just that. I promise to never stop marveling at your sleeping face breathing gently on my chest. I promise not a day will go by that I don’t wake up full of wild peace at the thought of getting to love you forever. Never to stop telling you a hundred times a day how gorgeous you are and never to hide it when the sight of you completely takes my breath away. I promise to always come get you when you go far away. And to grant you all the space you need to feel safe. I promise to always protect this with everything in me. To make room for you to grow and feel every big and small feeling. I promise to ask you to dance all the time and I promise to learn to be still.
You’ve sat and planned our future with me so many times, maybe not more than we’ve talked about our past, and I’ll never be able to thank you for all the healing that’s held. But these everyday moments of becoming a family, wrapping each other up each night and waking up full of more thankfulness than we’ve ever known. Making meals and a home together, messing up and making up, and dancing all the while… it’s the sweetest gift I’ve ever gotten. Starting the way we did, all at once giving each other everything and more, and a soft place to land for everyone- it was so right, perfect really. That you plan for the future with me though, stake your claim on my heart forever with talks of beach houses and grandmothering, it fills me full of the most profound joy. There’s a kind of seeing that you do, it’s quiet and safe but it shakes me to my core, on terrible days it’s why I turn away. But I’m learning all the time this is all we ever needed and more, you’re not leaving and I’m not either, not despite all the seeing and knowing, but because of it.
You pull me in to you all the time, like the shore pulls the sea, and with every wave crashing gently or wild, you set me free and give me a home all at once.
I promise never to take that for granted and love you forever no matter what.
marry me kara 