A few weeks ago I was going through some old things and I found a list I had made Michael when we were dating: “One hundred things I love about you.” I read through 2 pages, smiling, because not a lot has changed in the 5 years that I’ve written that letter. Here we are, no longer babies, but having one of our own. Ten thousand fights, make ups, movie nights, adventures, tears, and laughs later, it has been 4 years since we said I do. No one in this world stirs the same kind of emotion inside of me that he does. When we found each other, I didn’t even know if I could ever love somebody again. He chased me for a long time, and a lot of “no’s” and “I will not be your girlfriend’s” later, I finally jumped in. I would later discover that by saying I do, I was marrying adventure. First in the form of traveling to places inside myself that I had never been. Meeting your complete opposite and realizing you can’t live without them forces you to look down into the roots of who you think you are – and should be. My entire life I had watched my parents and the kind of love they had. She can’t stand him, he’s infatuated with her. She gets annoyed and he calls her baby, pulls her close, and everything else melts away. They hold hands, fight like cats and dogs, only to come home again. Disappearing into the wilderness for weeks on end just to spend time with each other and escape anything and everything else that stands in the way. She curses at him under her breath and he laughs and she laughs and somehow, I have never seen two people so incredibly different – her, stubborn, fiery, quick-tempered. Him, calm in his heart, patient, and kind. It’s a match that only can be understood when you meet that one person that hushes the fire inside of you, and balances any wrongs that need to feel right. When I was a little girl I told my sister that when I grew up, I would marry my Dad. And I met Michael there. In my own fiery battles, lord, I have thrown every inanimate object in this house at his head. And like cats & dogs we hiss and bark and come home again. Through the adventure of finding out these things about myself and learning that I am not always right, and him wrong, or him black, and myself white, we just are. The yin yang that somehow works even though it goes against everything that seems rational and right. In the last 4 years of marriage we have learned so much about each other that it feels like we lived a lifetime together in some other world, far away from here. Content, safe, and completely comfortable here with my best friend, sometimes looking at him feels like I am looking through at myself. In 4 months, it will be 7 years since our first kiss and the beginning of our story…where it all began. And in 4 months we will meet our little baby girl, and begin this new adventure with her. We are so excited to share something real with her, and show her that true love can be ugly, hard, scary, and victorious at the same time. And in the heart of the battles we are fighting, there is beauty and solace in the hard roads we take to reach happiness, and true love.