Choosing You
We started with a walk.
Somehow that walk became a life.
We were young,
hopeful,
imperfect,
and unaware of everything
love would eventually ask of us.
Melissa…
I have watched you become a wife.
I have watched you become a mother.
I have watched you become the
steady hand
and the heart of our home.
I have watched you
pour yourself into Lucas
and Anna.
I have watched you give.
I have watched you adapt.
I have watched you teach.
I have watched you carry.
I have watched you comfort.
I have watched you love
in ways most people will never fully see.
And through all of it,
Melissa,
you have been there.
In joy.
In exhaustion.
In uncertainty. In prayer.
In the quiet.
In the noise.
When we celebrated. When we struggled.
When we had answers.
When all we
could do
was
remain.
We moved through homes,
through work,
through uncertainty. We found laughter.
We found arguments. We found prayers.
We found losses. We watched our children grow,
and lived through difficult seasons,
ordinary nights, and moments when neither of us knew exactly what came
next.
And still,
we kept walking.
Lucas and Anna are the living fruit of our vows.
They did not interrupt our love story.
They revealed what our love was for.
Lucas,
you have shown me strength,
patience,
challenge,
growth,
and fatherhood.
Anna,
you have shown me tenderness,
joy,
innocence,
laughter,
and the sacred fragility of life.
I have watched you give.
I have watched
you adapt.
I have watched you teach.
I have watched you carry.
I have watched you comfort.
I have watched you love.
And through all of it,
Melissa,
you have been there.
Marriage was never merely romance.
It was formation. Covenant.
Two people being refined through sacrifice,
forgiveness,
children,
faith,
and the repeated decision to choose each other.
We were young and wild.
Now
we are rooted
and blessed.
All those years,
we believed
we were simply walking
beside one another.
But Christ had been walking
with us too.
Melissa, I would choose you again.
You have been my walk,
my witness, my home,
my refinement, and my gift.
We started
with a walk. And somehow,
by grace, the walk became a
life.