On Dying Together

{celebrating our fifth anniversary}

To say that I am not a very organized person would be an understatement. I am that person who borrowed Organizing for Dummies from the library and actually learned new things from it. What seemed to be common sense to others I had to learn by reading a book. It never occurred to me that I could collect all the pens on the counter top in a cup. The wonders of a container!

Hans, my very organized husband by nature, must have really loved me when he asked me to marry him.

When Emeth was an infant, the comments about his looks came largely from two groups of friends. Team A thought Emeth looked like Hans. Team B thought Emeth looked like me. And these two teams (at church) would have same debate week after week. I will always remember the day when someone (at the peak of one of these arguments) concluded that Emeth looked like both of us -- because Hans and I looked like each other.

That was probably the nicest thing anyone can say about me.

I attended one of my funerals -- at my wedding. Though I knew not the magnitude of my words, I died at the altar that day.

I died, in more ways than I understood. And I promised to be a new person, in more ways than I knew possible, with the one singing beside me. The amazing thing was that he promised to do the same. That he would die for me, to be with me, to be me.

Consider yourselves warned. Remember the magnitude of it all. For better and for worse, in marriage, the two resemble each other. Know well, and choose well, the person you want to resemble. Years from now, whom do you want to look like?

My love, thank you for these five years of dying together.
I take you to be mine, and I give myself to you
again.