Love is an Ocean

Thoughts on my 20th Wedding Anniversary

Love is an ocean. I say this to my 17-year-old self, who, in a hologrammed memory, is just stepping out of the car and walking into a conversation that will change the course of her entire life. She doesn’t know that the stranger with square glasses in the Reeses Peanut Butter T-Shirt who just asked a casual question will ask a million more before the story is over. They will all roll in like waves, one after the other, every single day for the rest of her life. That voice will etch itself into the very shoreline of her life, asking things like: What are we having for dinner? Did you check the mail? Do you think it’s a boy or a girl?

When love is young, you run to it like a child runs to the shore. All you see is the sand glittering, the splashing waves, the gulls that slice through the sapphire sky. You see the crystalline beauty that stretches across the whole horizon. You want to be there. You are awestruck, dumbstruck, lovestruck, and you want to be in those waters as deep as you can go without drowning.

But you don’t know what love is. You have to learn that. It takes time. Over years, you learn that this ocean doesn’t just hold you, but it holds whole worlds. You learn the love you have for this man, which began as an overwhelming passion that plunged you into trading any other imagined future for the one where you were saying “I do” with tears streaming down your face on a morning like this one, twenty years ago, is ultimately not even only about the two of you. Yes, there is still that sweet, secret deep where you go in the presence of only God and one another. But the ocean moves in unbroken motion, and there are living things that are kept alive by the constant churning of these waters. The ocean of your love sustains them, nourishes them, gives them a place to live and grow. These waters travel beyond the farthest reaches of your imagination. They carry vessels across the sea. They hold things up. They make a way between worlds. You will feel the swell and the break, but you will never know how far these waters go. 

I look back on all these years of marriage and see how tides change, how storms roll in and out, how the light reflects the sun rising and setting. The ocean is wider and wilder than you can ever imagine when you are standing at the edge of it. It is alive and deep. It is terrifying and inspiring. It is ceaselessly shaping and reshaping itself. It is the most beautiful place I have ever been.

From the family archive:

A video montage from waaaaaayyyy back. Another lifetime ago.

From the Podcast:

What does it look like to be married to a creative soul? Today, I am sharing a little bit of our story and what our life has been like these 20 years, trying to learn how to find peace in marriage while also responding to the deep call of the creative life.

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