Ten Years

The years are rushing by. When I think back to when we first met, I'm amazed by the stretch of time that has passed.

Ten years.

*Shakes head in complete and utter disbelief*

This month, Chris and I are celebrating ten incredible years of togetherness.

Throughout the last decade, we've been through a lot. Numerous moves, several states, countless jobs, layoffs, career changes, family feuds, fair-weather friends, sicknesses, the death of a loved one, and struggles that have tested and tried our patience with both ourselves and each other.

Yet we're still here. Right now. Together.

We made it through everything unscathed. Because we stuck together. And we'll continue to make it through life unscathed because we have each other.

That cold November night nearly a decade ago, when Fate intervened, I had other plans. Other plans that involved someone else and another life altogether. At the time, I truly thought that I had everything figured out. Who I was. What I was doing. Where I was going...

Then I met Chris. And my world suddenly, irrevocably changed.

I'm happy to say that we're not the same people we were when we met ten years ago. Hell, we're not the same people we were a mere five years ago. (I say this with great tenderness, however, as I'll always be proud of who we were during every chapter of our lives.) The fact that we can take the negative and create from it the positive has allowed us to continually press forward with a new awareness. We're changing, growing, maturing... We're becoming not necessarily better, but bigger and perhaps more brighter, more alive, than we've ever been.

When I look back at the last ten years and all we've been through, I can't help but be grateful for every single moment - the good and the bad. And this breathless appreciation has me more excited than ever about the next ten years to come... :)

* Dorky pics of us as kids. Nerdy-cool even then... ;)

__________________

"Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end."
-- Author Unknown