To my Husband at Year 12

We met when you wore neon baggy sweatshirts and my voice was two octaves higher. 

Your pockets were full of tracts and I excitedly showed you my homemade ones, laminated to boot. 

You mindlessly bounced a hacky sack in a circle of friends and rode a longboard to the beach.

My Minnesota accent confused you, but you couldn’t resist playing “tag” with me. 

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And so, on Wells Street, with snowflakes on eyelashes, we became a thing. 

Syrupy sweet, the fastest of friends. 

We rode all the colors of the L, walked miles of Windy City, and shared dreams gloriously soaked in faith and naivety. 

You drank black tea, while I sipped mint mochas. 

You ate all the cafeteria’s bran flakes and spinach, while I baked you a fudgy walnut pie.

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You asked me to marry you on a rooftop of peonies and candles, inside our favorite city. 

All this after kayaking between skyscrapers and slurping pesto linguine in fancy clothes. 

All this after I got mad at you for acting weird and not sharing your coat, boiling over like an angry teakettle. 

I ranted hot words only to burst into tears after realizing the diamond inside your coat pocket.

The adventure, romance, and emotional heights in this single day were a foreshadow of all the fun and fighting to come. 

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We got married in a community center above the swimming pool, our friends clad in bright blue and clementine orange. 

Bleached-blond hair, thrift-store heels, and the Boerckel brothers electrifying the dance floor. 

We exchanged our vows to love Jesus most and to the farthest reaches of the earth, even if that meant unique sufferings and hairy legs.

I kissed you shyly in front of relatives at every glass chink and we itched to zoom off to the Hyatt in our car full of balloons. 

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One year later, in a Balinese hospital, something began that has continued to the present, a profitable venture in making babies.

High on anticipation, pennies in our pockets, and mostly questions as to the future, we spent three years in the heart of America living with a variety of roommates. 

Our longest stint with your silver-haired Grandma, the sharer of her green-carpeted back bedroom and evening brownies and ice cream. 

She sympathized with my first acquaintance with morning sickness and fought cancer like a steely youth.

You played the part of firefighter in a foundry of frothing metals and redneck motorcycle men until God moved the four of us to a small seminary in Minneapolis. 

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Here, our appetite was wet for joy.

A joy that freed us from ourselves and would hold us in the trials ahead.     

We lived in mousey apartments, shopped with WIC coupons, and made friends with the Somali neighbor who fed us fried bread and spicy tea. 

You beat the sun awake and chose to love us more than the studies you adored.

It would have been easy for us to fall apart with everything stretched tight, but because you put us ahead of yourself, we thrived in the stress. 

Our arms gained two more children and we grew like watered plants inside a community of dark-chocolate richness.

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It was tempting to want to stay inside this warm cocoon of loved ones and good teaching.

However, we followed joy on a 20-hour plane ride to the other side of the world.  

We exchanged smooth paths around sprawling lakes, book clubs with close friends over steaming mugs of peppermint tea, bonfires with family, and a favorite taco truck, for a mountain of shepherds and an isolation that introduced us to depression and anxiety as never before. 

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Our kids now number five, with one final addition shortly arriving. 

We eat too many beans with our hands and speak something akin to Hindi. 

Our offspring handle the mountains like goats and you make friends with your easy smile.

I cry most days, but can’t deny the beautiful things at work around and inside of me.

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This stage of life doesn’t feel as magical as that candlelit rooftop of peonies where it started. 

Our voices have deepened and there are new lines around our eyes. 

Most days, we tuck our squirmy people into their bunk beds and then flop on the couch with weighted sighs. 

Our life feels like a hard-earned survival guide for diarrhea, stomach bugs, and torturous flights with queasy kids. 

These mountains don’t sparkle like Chicago.

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Nevertheless, I see you in your goofy shepherd’s hat playing cricket in the street with the neighbor kids and I spot the old you, just older, hairier, and wiser. 

I would say you are a man’s man, doing things you don’t want to, for the good of our family and in devotion to the Lord. 

You make me laugh like a little girl and transform our living room into a party with hoards of candy and punch bowls of popcorn.

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We are buds deep down, to the dregs of persistent sadness and loss, to the heights when another child is placed in our arms and we see the Spirit create life in our current valley of dry bones. 

The nights with colicky newborns and tear-stained pillows have been long. They have taken their toll.

And yet, I couldn’t have imagined the heights we’ve traveled and the person you would become. 

Our story has been well-crafted. I don’t pine for another. 

Chai in hand, here’s to the last 12 years that have been better together.