Much of the intervening time was extraordinarily difficult. Some of it
has been sublimely fulfilling. I am happy to say that the latter has
steadily eclipsed the former as the years went by.
lessons learned. But maybe now isn’t the time for that. Maybe it’s
better to just acknowledge what IS, here and now. Right now, we have four beautiful children.
I have never been more sure than I am now, that asking Stacey to marry
me was the right decision.
Without a doubt, on this day I love Stacey more than ever before.
At this moment, I am proud of the woman Stacey has become and is
becoming; and I am proud of the man she has helped me to be.
This month as the year wanes I look forwards confidently to a year
that will be more abundantly blessed than any we have yet experienced. There was a time I feared I would look back on the years of our
marriage as lost years, years wasted in futile struggling. I know now
that nothing in those years was wasted. Marriage is truly an
institution, but it is not one that is built on law, on Church, or on
tradition. Every marriage is its own institution, one in which the
very Time that is spent together forms an ever firmer foundation. We
are who we are, partly because of our choices and our efforts; but
partly because we simply Have Been here, together. In the space
between us a palace forms, a moving temple formed of our memories, our
agreements, our tensions, our still-forming dreams. We live on
hallowed ground, consecrated by our own feet and hands, witnessed by
our own pasts and futures. On this day we observe the Tempus Aeternum
and proclaim to the universe that so long as our heartbeats still echo
somewhere and sometime, this household is forever; this bond is
unbroken; this hearth is eternal. Stacey Anne Andrews-Grimm, I love you with all my heart and want you
to be my wife even more now than I did on this day ten years ago.