Crazy (in love) after all these years!
When Pedro and I started falling in love in October of 1986, we thought ‘together’ meant spending every spare moment with each other in between classes and work. When we stood before family and friends two years later and vowed to love each other and stick together through the good and the bad, we thought ‘together’ meant we didn’t have to say goodbye each evening. When our firstborn arrived four years later, with a hole in her heart and a propensity to never sleep, we started to understand that ‘together’ meant teamwork—all the time.
Together means you argue things out—but you still love each other because you’ve made a choice and a commitment. Together means change—I had to learn parenting skills and how to say ‘No’ and carry through and work as a team with my husband—and it wasn’t always easy—but together, we worked hard at parenting.
When Pedro received a diagnosis of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, we jumped into research, decisions, treatment and trying to keep our family together despite the long distance between our home and his treatment.
Shortly after remission, came relapse with a vengeance. But we knew we had two beautiful reasons to fight. And so we fought. When he recovered, we knew without a doubt it had nothing to do with medicine, and everything to do with miracle.
The years have continued to march along, and together we have weathered trials and triumphs, sickness and health, arguments and disagreements, job changes, career changes—but always, always, a sense that someone else holds us together. We can’t do marriage on our own.
Ever since we said our vows before God and men, we’ve known that we had a solemn duty to stay together—to work things out (I can’t promise that I’ve never gone to bed angry, but I’ve never gone to bed angry two nights in a row).
Now, after almost 25 years of marriage our nest only shelters one baby bird in the summer time (the oldest has started her own nest), and we’re looking forward to another 25 years of together—and whatever those years bring, whether sickness or health or trials or joy, we know that God will continue to hold us together.
