Valentine's Day: Fifteen Years

Fifteen valentines
Anniversary today
Journey with best friend

The roses were waiting for me today(Tuesday) when I arrived home.
I do not know where time has fled. Our peaks, our valleys, and inbetweens, a wonderful journey.

I love these thoughts from Madeleine L'Engle"


“ …A love which depends solely on romance, on the combustion of two attracting chemistries, tends to fizzle out. The famous lovers usually end up dead. A long termed marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship. It is certainly not that passion disappears, but that it is conjoined with other ways of love…

…Love of music, of sunsets and sea: a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the star and think of the marvelous strangeness of this universe—these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted…

…But the wonderful thing, whether we are together or apart, is to know that he is in the world and that we belong together. And what I must learn is to love with all of me, giving all of me, and yet remain whole in myself. Any other kind of love is too demanding of the other; it takes, rather than gives. To love so completely that you lose yourself in another person is not good. You are giving a weight, not the sense of lightness and light that loving someone would give. To love wholly, generously, and yet retain the core that makes you you…

…Our love has been anything but perfect and anything but static.
Inevitably there have been times when one of us has outrun the other and has had to wait patiently for the other to catch up. There have been times when we misunderstood each other, been insensitive to the other’s needs. I do not believe there is any marriage where this does not happen. The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seemed to be over. Sometimes these desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing that it possibly could be without it.”

From Two-Part Invention by Madeleine L’Engle