A Poem to Celebrate 4 Years!

This is not my usual habit to share such personal things with the world, but I remember when one of my heroes told me he writes poems to his wife. It was one of those things that I wanted to start doing for Charity when we started dating and it has become somewhat of a tradition in our family. I thought I'd share the most recent one so that you could get a little picture of our life thus far.


Happy Anniversary Love

I remember the feeling of curiosity when I went home,
To tell my family that my feelings had grown,
It’s not that they were established or concrete,
I remember wanting to be discrete,
With the interest I could not yet trust,
Was it something real or just a fleeting lust?
I remember going through all my reasons why I shouldn’t try,
And all the hesitations that tried to deny,
That a seed of desire had actually taken root,
And my attempts to deny it would only be moot,
Because what I didn’t know in those early days,
Those days that have become kind of a haze,
Is that something beautiful was born,
A healing presence was replacing that which was torn,
So we jumped in feet first,
To find out if our love would slake the thirst,
That we had tried our best to bury,
The desire that we could actually marry,
But even though our feet were four in,
Our hands clinched branches as to bend,
Our old life that we weren’t ready to leave,
Our new dreams not ready to seize,
I thought we’d fight, pulling each other to our sides,
But instead, it was more like a collide,
And it was during this collision that we were contorted,
Painful, sure, but so important,
You see we were becoming one without the sex,
Thank you God, He spared us from it being even more complex!
So that when we said yes in front of our peers,
We could stare in each other’s eyes without any fear,
The oneness was complete and then we had to decide,
How we’d live our new lives on the other side,
Of all our great plans and best made intentions,
We were forming our desires into petitions,
Looking back now that first year seemed,
Like a time to enjoy you, to learn how to dream,
I learned that you love lazy mornings,
And that you think camping is boring,
You love to get unexpected flowers,
And have a definite routine in the shower,

Year number two entered our world with bang,
When we learned little Nile would be joining our gang,
I kissed your belly and prayed all 12 weeks,
And then we lost her, and learned how to weep,
We stood on the trust that we had constructed,
And leaned on the church when our hearts were busted,
But in the midst of that mourning and loss,
We found our new home across,
The Atlantic where we never thought we’d be,
A place that we’d learn to love and see,
As a gift from the God who brought us together,
As a gift from the One who said it was better,
To give than to receive,
To love than to leave,

And then our third year came in Lancaster PA,
Where I learned that it’s not just in the South where people say “hey”,
We shamelessly scoped mom’s fridge for a peak,
And ate at their house like 15 times a week,
I soaked in your roots and made them my own,
And learned that you were my new kind of home,
Not long after we arrived did we find out,
We’d be having our son where they eat sauerkraut,
So as we prepared for the day that was to coming,
I learned that Pennsylvania snows require shoveling,
And then King came on March the fourth,
Again our lives began to morph,
From solely focused on each other,
To turning our eyes toward another,
I thought it might rob us of the love that we had,
But in fact, all it did was add,
You know I had wondered why your pregnancy was such a turn-on,
Now I think it was our love for the baby that was starting to bond,
During that time you showed me self-sacrifice like I had never seen,
And taught me what it looks like for a mother to beam,
It was a time of beauty that I am still coming to terms with,
A time when our love surpassed even the best kiss,

And without introduction we walked into year number four,
Drowsy from the lack of sleep and reaching for more,
Normalcy, routine, whatever the word,
We were looking for some sort of stability to occur,
But we certainly didn’t find it as we packed to leave,
Nor did we find it in the tears and grief,
Of leaving the life and the home that we’d grown to love,
There didn’t seem to be enough goodbyes or enough hugs,
To sufficiently describe how much we would miss,
There love and oh how we wished,
They could come with us to our place,
Because we were often scared to face,
What it’d be like to learn to love something new,
With our limited knowledge and limited view,
But we moved here and found that God’s address,
Stretches farther than America’s blessed,
Land that we love to dream about,
But honestly think that we can do without,
We struggled but got through that first fall,
And spent the winter huddled around heaters by the wall,
And all the sicknesses that seemed to plague our son,
And even the second move and the new bun,
In the oven that we can’t wait to meet,
Hopefully this time I won’t have to take a seat.

Now we’ve finished four and enter into five,
I can’t imagine having any other by my side,
Whenever the lines turn to describing you I fumble,
I seem to start, stop and then mumble,
So I’ll just say thank you my true,
For being my bue,
And for giving me the best life I could imagine,
Helping me stretch my faith to fathom,
That our great God could actually lend,
His love to me so much as to commend,
A woman like you to someone like me,
You are so delightful and so free,
You will always be my wife, my love, my bride,
And I’ll be waiting at year number five.