Dear Susie

Dear Susie,

Happy Valentine’s Day!  We spent our first Valentine’s Day in 1996 as college students just beginning to fall in love.  I remember the first time I kissed you a few weeks later, you know that?  I can still feel that delicious, tingly craziness I felt standing in the music room fifteen years ago leaning over you as you sat at the piano and kissing you, my lips drawing in yours, the connection, the adhesion that occurred.  All the silly schoolboy nervousness I felt.

In the years since, I’ve watched you bloom into a remarkable woman – a mother to kids who require and receive so much from you; an influencer who has thrown your life into the vision of our church; a friend to anyone who faces a moment of need; and the wife, partner, and biggest fan of a guy trying to find and hold onto his place in God and the world.

How you put up with my cantankerous, selfish eccentricities I’ll never know.  How you can trust me and respect me so fiercely, so passionately, in spite of my inability to love you back as well as you love me I can’t comprehend.  How you can be so affectionate and caring toward me, not just in public when it matters and makes you look good, but in private when it makes me feel good is a mystery to me.

You have an astounding ability to absorb pain and disappointment and continue to believe in me and in our life and ministry together.  You have at times had to live on so little – attention, recognition, money, and respect – and yet you have always made much of it, scooping together the crumbs and creating a banquet for our family to enjoy.  In each season of blessing we’ve known, you’ve remained simple and pure in your ambitions and intense in your integrity.

You’re the better person in our marriage.  I tend to get more credit and applause because I’ve been called to talk in public; but you’re the better person.  Stronger than I am.  Deeper than I am.  More like Jesus than I am.  I married up.  Thanks for saying “yes.”

Happy Valentine’s Day.  I really like being married to you.

Love,

Mark

Comments

[AL]

How truly beautiful this post was. Your wife's the luckiest person in the world!

[Wyonna]

This started the water works; truly beautiful