Appreciation.

I don't brag often, and I'm not intending to brag here, but sometimes I feel the deep need to appreciate someone publicly because I feel like my mere attempts in daily life aren't enough.

When we married, I knew that my husband would be an incredible partner in life, but in the past few weeks he has completely blown me away with the endless reserve of love that he shows me. I've been sick since before Christmas, one thing after another, a cold, food poisoning, and finally culminating in another ruptured ovarian cyst just a few days ago which landed me in the ER. Throughout all of this, his patience never ended...the cups of tea, glasses of water, retrieving of menial things, cleaning up the house when I didn't have the energy, staying up in the middle of the night to hold my hand through wrenching pain. No matter how small or enormous my pain, he never belittles me, rather he tells me that he admires how strong and tough I am in the face of all of it. He holds me when I need him to and he gives me space when I need to be on my own.

My Sean has a peace about him that speaks to my heart. I tend to get extremely anxious and panicky when it comes to hospitals and when it comes to admitting that I need help in overcoming my pain. A simple look from him, a touch on my arm, or a quiet word in my ear, and my panic is soothed, which is no easy feat. He always knows what I need without my even saying a word, which is both amazing and terrifying to have someone know you better than you know yourself on some occasions. He is a man of God, who always prays for me and for our marriage without ceasing...and really I couldn't ask for more.

Before we married, I thought I knew what love meant to me, I thought I needed the perfect engagement story, the perfect honeymoon, and I thought I needed him to speak my love languages perfectly. I'll be the first to say that our engagement story was lame and disappointing, our honeymoon was one of the most awful "vacations" I've ever been on, and my dear husband may never know how much bringing flowers home means to me, but I could care less, now. For too long I let these things dictate the scale on which I judged how much my husband loved me, which only robbed me of the truth of how much he really does. One look in his eyes, every moment I spend with him, every tiny movement of every day life; this is when he tells me he loves me. His quiet strength in which he selflessly loves me and provides a frame and foundation for my crazy, impatient, and imperfect self to passionately love the world and him with everything in me...that's more important to me than anything. I didn't have many of the perfect things that I expected I deserved, but the less I care about these things, the more they fade into the background and the more I can plainly see the undeserved love given to me by a man who loves me more than he knows how to tell me. He often asks me if I know how much he loves me and I just reply, "Oh honey, you must not know of much you show it, but I see it, and I know." I think that sometimes receiving someone's gift of love is the greatest way of showing appreciation and love in return.

I'm excited to see what the next months and years bring for us and I'm glad to know that I'll always have my closest friend with me to laugh at my stupid jokes and be with me through the best and the worst times of our life together.

Two of my favorite pictures...the look on Sean's face kills me, he's trying not to cry.