Five Years Ago Today

Baby Cameron,
Today is your Mommy and Daddy's five year anniversary! Time is such an odd thing, because I can still remember that day so vividly like it just happened, but I also feel like we have grown up and changed so much. I remember the way we looked (oh to be young and thin again), how it felt to wear my delicate lace dress, how exciting it was to be taking off for our honeymoon to Puerto Vallarta... I had never really been on a fabulous vacation like that before. I had already begun to move my things down to San Antonio to our first apartment together (totally booted your daddy's things out to make room in the closet for all my shoes), and it was weird to think that I had never lived anywhere other than Abilene in my entire life. We were so excited to be just far enough away from our families that we would be forced to make it on our own.

I remember how your Papa (who miraculously wore a tux and straight tie) said he was impressed that I didn't seem nervous right before he walked me down the aisle. I told him that I wasn't at all, that I was just ready to get the wedding part over and just be married! As the wedding date got closer, all the details just seemed pointless. "Oh, so you want to pick out and buy vases that completely don't go with what I had envisioned in my head, Mom? Who cares... You are paying." The funny thing is that I will probably be the same way with you someday!

Truth be told, we had decided back in December that we wanted to be married, but I didn't really get my engagement ring and a proper proposal until Valentine's Day. Your daddy wanted it to be a "surprise" and to make it very romantic. I assumed we would have a special dinner or something, but that Saturday morning, he made me breakfast and popped the question with a poem and a specially decorated box for the ring. He even got down on one knee in my tiny apartment kitchen and I cried right there in my pajamas.

So when June finally rolled around, it seemed like we were finally going to have a paper officially saying what we had known a long time ago - that we were permanent. But to us, the wedding was more about a commitment to God than to the government. We both believe that God has made us for each other, to love and fight with and support each other until we croak. I remember hearing a friend's wedding vows where instead of saying "until death do us part," they said, "until one of us shall lay the other into the arms of Jesus." It still gives me goosebumps.

But that is what we hope for you! And I pray, even now, that you will have a godly and loving husband who sees you as an equal partner, his "help-meet" as one of my favorite bible verses says. And even though it is far from perfect, I pray that our marriage will be the example to you of how to find and love that person. You deserve a husband as wonderful as your Daddy, who gave me my anniversary card early last night so I would know that he had put thought and consideration into it.

And next week, we are finally going to have another fabulous vacation together! While you get some quality grandparents time in Abilene, we are headed to North Carolina to visit some friends and see that beautiful part of the country. (Burglars beware, we have house-sitters!) We can't wait to have time to just hang out together, to remember what it feels like to be carefree and fall in love all over again. I hear that there are lots of surprises in store for me, so I can't wait to tell you all about it.