June 23rd, 1990

I called this website Living With Your Heart for two reasons.  The obvious one, of course, is the idea of learning to embrace a heart healthy lifestyle.  But I also had a more subtle meaning in mind:  I’m writing not just about the physical heart, but also about the love of my life–my husband.

Today is June 23rd.  Lee and I got married 19 years ago today.

Weren’t we cute?!  In case you’re wondering, we look totally different in 2009.  Older.  Much older.  More wrinkley.  Lee is bald now, and skinny.  I love that I’m putting cake in his mouth in this picture–all these years later, the food is a little different, but I’m still feeding him.  We use forks now, though.

And as happy as we were that day, in that photo, we’re more so today.  The last nineteen years have been so much more than we ever could have expected.  We’ve been tested and challenged.  We’ve driven each other nearly insane.  We’ve worked really hard to make a life that meets our needs as a family, as a couple, but also as individuals.

Getting married is not a goal, or a solution, or an answer.  It’s signing on for a 24/7 job that lasts forever.  If you have kids, they’ll (hopefully!) grow up and move on, but your spouse is there to stay.  A marriage requires commitment and focus and attention.  Even 19 years on, we work at making it work.  Some days that’s harder than others.

I think we probably have an unusual, but ultimately helpful perspective on marriage:  Lee is a divorce lawyer.  He spends his days helping people figure out how to end their marriages.  We’re hyper-consci0us of the ease with which people can abandon a relationship when it gets difficult.  We’ve been through some rocky patches–that’s what happens in long-term relationships.

There were some very bad days in the fall after Lee’s heart attack.  I was so young, and it all seemed so overwhelming.  I’ve always been slow to accept change, and this was A LOT of change.  Plus, it was so frightening to think that my husband  had this awful disease.  It was here to stay, and there were moments when I wanted no part of it.  I remember thinking that this wasn’t at all what I had signed up for!  It took me a while to realize that it actually was exactly what I had signed up for:  remember that line in the wedding vows about “in sickness or in health?”  We just got to the “in sickness” part sooner than I had expected, and it was harder than I had expected.  It sucked.

But our marriage is the center of our universe.  It is the foundation on which the rest of our relationships, and lives, are built.  It’s not about me, or about him.  It’s about us–at the bottom of it all, we’re a team, and not being on the team is, and always has been, unthinkable.  We’ve gotten through other rocky patches, too.  We talk it through, work it out, and move on.  We make each other laugh.  Lee is still the smartest, funniest, kindest man I know.  He is my soulmate, and the heart of my heart.

Happy Anniversary, my darling.  I love you.