Dear Husband, I Choose You Every Day for the Rest of Our Lives

We renewed our vows yesterday. Not with a big party in front of all our family and friends. I didn’t put on a white dress, there was no tux, and we didn’t pay for a hall or buy a new wedding band.

We renewed our vows in front of a sink full of dirty dishes, with the washer and dryer going,  just the two of us, under a sign that says “in this kitchen we dance.” Our kids were bickering in the background, and we looked at each other with “how did we get here?” in our eyes. But then I remembered how we got here, and my love for you came crashing over me all over again.

It’s easy to say “I do” when you’re 21 and fresh-faced, with the world ahead of you and no mutual traumas behind you. It’s easy to say you will when you don’t know yet about the trials and losses and battles you’ll have to fight together. It’s easier when you don’t know yet, not really, what all of those words really mean.

It’s harder to keep saying yes when the laundry is piled up. The kids are fighting again, and we’re not sure whose turn it is to let the dog out, and we’re both mentally calculating the math of how many I took the trashes out equals a week of I made the lunches. It’s harder to say yes when you’re not seeing eye to eye or when the day-to-day crashes up against your intentions and makes a muddled mess of how you thought things were going to go.

But it’s easier, too. Because now I know you in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined way back then. I know who you are when the chips are down. I’ve seen you weak, and I’ve seen you strong. I know your serious side and your silly side and your “we’re on the brink of collapse but still fighting” side. I know you’ll show up for me in my hardest moments, and you’ll carry me when I can’t hold myself together. I’ll carry you, too.

There have been so many beautiful moments when we’ve seen each other at our best, but we’ve also seen each other at our worst. And we’ve continued to choose each other, flaws and all. It was easy to choose you on a pretty day in July, surrounded by our family and friends. It’s harder to choose you when it’s just the two of us against the world, and we both feel like we’re drowning. But it’s infinitely more meaningful, too.

True love—the resilient kind that grows and fights and lasts—isn’t there at the altar. It’s here, in the trenches, with me and you. And tonight, in the kitchen, I looked at you and saw all those moments playing out like a movie in my head. Our vows are verbs these days, and I realized I’d choose you to do this life with, over and over again.

So before I switch the laundry to the dryer and you try (for the third night in a row) to reteach subtraction to our struggling son, I’ll hold your face here in the kitchen. I’ll look into your eyes when I promise that I’ll love you for better or for worse. And it’ll mean even more than it did 17 years ago because my love for you is bigger than I could have ever imagined back then.

Tonight, I’ll choose you once more. Just like I’ll choose you over and over again for the rest of life—for better or worse, in sickness and health, in good times and in bad. We will. And we do.