What I didn’t recognize for most of my life was that you can do something over and over and still want to do it again.  At the end of the day I will probably always sigh when I finally crawl into bed, and at the beginning of the day, without fail, I will stumble first to the coffee maker, second to the couch.  I had been afraid of the over and over things.  I had picked myself up every couple of years and put myself somewhere else just to keep life shaking.  But now I am here, three years in the same, small town I had already lived in, three years with the same man and there are lots of small sames, too.  Saturday morning breakfasts, summer bicycling, Charlie Brown Christmas trees, taco Tuesdays and the rush in my Spirit when he is singing from the front of the gathering.  Even smaller: his shuffling, swinging, loose walk when he is talking or self conscious or happy, the way he breathes in and sips his coffee all at once, that knot in his shoulder that creeps into his neck, the small puffing noises while he is sleeping.

Yet butted against the familiarity and rhythm of what we are, are the unexpected notes.  Delightful surprises.  I have had to live large in order to be married to this man.  I have learned to climb rocks, ride mountains, run far, paint walls, make fantastic margaritas, even larger: resolve conflict.  Forgive.  Fight well.  I have had to lean on another person without becoming lazy or small.  I have had to submit without losing my voice.  We have found so many things inside ourselves we did not know were there.  We are discovering each other and that feels sacred. 

He is away this anniversary and last night, after climbing the stairs and napping on the couch, I sat up and for a moment I panicked.  What will I do without him?  What is there to do alone?  And then I remembered all of the things I loved before and all of the time I have spent solitary and happy and now there is a book already finished, an empty berry carton, and there is this: something new written.  But you see how quickly it all shifts.  How three years ago I was on the edge of becoming this new person who would need another person so deeply.  Who, three years from now, will be a different creature yet.  And this is the thrillingest part of marriage: the growth that springs from the safety of life with him.