A long line of love

Happy Valentine’s Day!

At that statement, you either just rolled your eyes or smiled and nodded. Perhaps a little bit of both.

I’ve been away from home for work the last few weeks, and I flew home to spend this day with my husband. But instead he’s in Oregon with his family, as his Dad’s been in the hospital. So ironically, I’m spending today all alone at home with my two cats.

But. That’s okay. I don’t need this day to tell me that my husband loves me and that I love him. I don’t need roses and chocolate to know we are each others everything. I have our history, our today, and our future to tell me that. I have a solid base of friendship that we’ve built upon over years. I have the dreams we dream, both big and small. I have the knowledge he’s only a phone call away, no matter what.

But more than that, I come from a long line of love. I knew when I said, “I do.” it would be for life. I would draw from the strength and lessons learned from all those loves before me and around me.  We got married in the same church  my parents and grandparents got married in… and today we have the support of friends and family to lift us up any time we hit rough patches.

And rough patches DO happen! Be they between us or around us.

Take today as an example. Having a sick parent is HARD. Especially when they are all the way across the country, dictating us be apart. A big stressful thing of it is that I can’t be right there to support my husband, and I know there’s been countless times all he’s wanted is a hug.

But we’re pulling together nonetheless with all the nuances of life around this, and we have been able to lean on friends in the spaces between to help us take it one day at a time. We’ll get to the other side of this stronger and having learned from it.

Learning from our past and each other is huge to build a solid future. No, we can’t predict the future… what events are to come or how we will react to them. But I do know I have one heck of support system — that long line of love — to lean on as anything and everything comes our way. And that’s priceless.

It’s all of THAT love that I pause and honor today.

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I debated sharing this here, but I might as well. Anyone who knows us in real life has asked us, “So how did y’all meet?” And they’ve received that really uncomfortable silence, because its not an easy story to tell.  Nonetheless, when SheKnows Media did a call out for unorthodox relationships that work, I decided to submit our love story.

I know better than to read comments, but in response to one of the comments on this story, I suppose having conversations over dinner with my parents are considered stolen moments. I’ll make sure and tell them that. Ha! Anyway, our story is ours and I love it, even the “ugly” parts.

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