My Best Friend, My Husband

[From Donald Miller's A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.]

As I've said before, I write my blogs as way to purge myself of things, or convince myself of things, or help myself realize things...and the only constant in that is MYSELF. The above quote was one I've had saved on my laptop for quite a while. It's from a book that my husband (before he was my husband) encouraged me to read. I took a photo of this paragraph because it spoke to me...I rediscovered it today when I was cleaning out a few folders of random photos I'd saved, and it made me think.

All I do is write about me. 

Before I go any further, let me just say that I think it's healthy to write about yourself. It's healthy to analyze yourself, and really be open, honest, and passionate about something (whether it be the drive to find out what causes your insecurities and nip it in the bud, or about the color red). But, I also think it's healthy to push away from that and explore other things. That being said...

This is going to be a blog about my best friend, Vince.

Never in my life have I known anyone as loving as Vince, and I don't just mean that he hugs me and kisses me all the time...I mean the nature of his heart. I think that's what made me want to be his friend in the first place.

When we first became friends (and I don't mean when we met, because that was years ago. I mean when we first really got to know each other, roughly two Thanksgivings ago when he started giving me guitar lessons) there was something about Vince that drew me to him. He was funny, smart, fun to be around, but more than those things, he was real. He never put up a wall or showed me any kind of pretense. He was always just Vince, and being around him was as easy as breathing.

I could say that I'm writing this because he cleaned our apartment the other day, and scrubbed our kitchen last night (which he did, and which I'm so thankful for), but that's not it...I'm writing this because, as horrible as this is, I often let myself forget to be amazed by the person that he is.

Vince loves people,
and he loves God.
He is selfless,
and caring,
and considerate,
and kind.
He's passionate about love,
about our marriage,
about music,
about his relationships with others.
He encourages me,
pushes me,
holds me up when I feel like I can't stand.
He works hard at whatever he's doing.
He holds me accountable.
He loves harder than anyone I've ever known...
hard enough that he's the first person in my whole life that I believe, without reservation, loves me.

If you've read my past blogs, you'll understand how huge that is. If you know me at all, you'll understand how huge that is. And the really amazing thing is I believed he loved me before we got married, before we were dating, before we knew what we were. He would look at me and tell me he loved me, and I knew without a doubt exactly what he meant. It wasn't because he gave me googly eyes, or gifts, or any of that...it wasn't even necessary in a romantic way...it was the way he treated me, the way he talked to me, the way we were together. There has always been love with us.

We've been married now just over eight months, and there isn't  day that goes by that I don't think about how crazy it is that something as wonderful as Vince decided to be with me...not because I'm devaluing my self worth (because I know he doesn't want me to do that, and I know that I don't want to do that anymore), but because of how genuinely wonderful he is.

I write this as a way of saying thank you to the man who turned my world upside down, and helped me glue together the pieces of me that were broken. With him, I see the love of God just in the way he interacts with me, with our friends, with strangers, even with our dog, Juno. He's my husband, and my best friend in the whole world. I'm thankful that I get to spend the rest of my life learning to love and appreciate him more and more.