celebrating love

Last week Chris and I celebrated 23 years together as husband and wife. I can’t believe how quickly time has gone by. I can always count our years together by our eldest daughter’s age as she is one year younger than we are married. We got her as a surprise from our Father God. We were not planning on babies for a while. Chris didn’t have a steady job and we had no health insurance. I was planning on finishing college and he was going to school for his Masters of Divinity. God of course, had His own plans, and I am so thankful. I had moved away from most of my family. I was 21 and pregnant and newly married. Yes, I was afraid and bewildered. My pastor’s wife told me something at the time  I have never forgotten. She told me  that “God never orders anything He can’t pay for.” This and her calm resolve brought me peace and I rested in that truth on more than one occasion.  The rest, you might say, is history. We got our beautiful curly haired Katie, then our Annie, and then our John. Later, at 40, I was blessed with another surprise. I was pregnant with my fifth (the fourth lost in miscarriage much earlier) child. We ended up losing him at 16 weeks gestation. We named him Benjamin and he is forever a Morgan child.

But alas, I digress from my original story. We met at my sister Liza’s wedding, having been not-so-secretly set up by Liza and her husband and Chris’s best friend, Mickey. I met him the night before the wedding, July 1, 1986. We were married just a year later on July the 3rd 1987. Katie was born April of 1988. God moves quickly sometimes.

There was so much to love about this man. He was a modern day Huck Finn, so simple and yet so profound in his thinking. I found peace in those beautiful blues. I loved to hear him sing and play his guitar. He was like no one I had ever known. We got lost in conversation, talking about all things spiritual, God and who He is, about Love and what it looked like (not realizing I was falling right into it), and about anything that we felt had real value. We laughed often. Our senses of humor aligning so perfectly. We walked on railroad tracks, in the rain, and through paths in the woods not knowing where we would end up. It was an adventure. He had me and I didn’t even know it. Once again, I had my own plans, but God’s plan prevailed. So thankful.

So on this eve of our anniversary, we once again had a spontaneous adventure together. We decided to go somewhere new and eat some sushi together at Ra Sushi in Atlanta. A wonderful choice! We sat outside in the evening air and enjoyed conversation and delicious food together. A dragonfly decide to join us.

Later we went exploring, just like in the our old days. We walked the streets of Atlanta and went to Piedmont Park, stopping for some refreshment at Willy’s Mexicana Grill. The light faded into the night and the city lights began to glow. We both felt free, talking about things that mattered and laughing about things that didn’t.

On the way home, he took me to my favorite coffee place, Octane Coffee. He doesn’t drink coffee. He loves me. My cappuccino had a heart in it when I got to the bottom. “How fitting”, I thought to myself and made him hold the cup for me until I got the shot I wanted.

No matter what, my heart is his. I gave it to him 23 years ago.

Our last adventure of the night was to go for a midnight swim in our pool. We lit the twinkly lights and set up candles and torches around the pool and played some of our favorite music. I got in the pool with my camera for some of the shots, and he was patient with my photojournalistic tendencies. Then we danced in water. We didn’t talk for a long time. The cicadas sang their song. It was a good night to be married for 23 years.

His eyes are still just as blue. I still find peace there. Now that our kids are nearly grown, I hope we continue our adventures together, laughing and talking, and kissing, and dancing. He is my love.