Dear Husband, I used to dream of you.

In the center of the mall, surrounded by Christmas shoppers. In between the rows of novels at the bookstore. At the edge of the seashore while couples strolled past hand-in-hand. I used to sit in the corner of a restaurant and imagine looking over and finding your eyes.

I figured I would know you instantly. I would see our future before I learned your name.

But life almost never falls for these romantic tropes. That’s what I’ll tell our son one day. Don’t look for a cinematic moment signaled by dramatic soundtrack music. Real life is often unromantic, but it has something that no book or movie can replicate.

It’s real.

The first memory I have of you is captured in the amber glow of an autumn afternoon in West Virginia. You were walking across the New River Gorge Bridge with your family. I nudged my mother and said, “That boy goes to my school.” See, I already knew your name, but I didn’t see the future. I didn’t know you yet.

It’s strange to me now because it feels as if I should have known, even at fifteen. After all these years of togetherness, of conversations and arguments, shaping and pruning each other like half-grown plants, it seems like there should have been a spiritual line connecting us. Something I could’ve felt, like electricity.

Instead, there was no singular moment of meeting eyes across the restaurant. It was a journey into love filled with a thousand discreet decisions. Sometimes I made the wrong choice. I took the wrong turn, beset by confusion and my own self-interest, but the path always meandered back to you. Perhaps there was a line tethering us after all. I just couldn’t see it.

Eight years ago today, there was a different river and a storm sweeping over the mountains. I stepped outside dressed in a white dress, flowers in my hair, and I saw those dark clouds heading towards our riverbank. And then I saw you, waiting for me. For an inexplicable moment, I felt surprise, as if I couldn’t believe you’d shown up. Tears burned my eyes as I took in the beautiful lines of your face, because I believed there would only be one moment like this.

This one moment, a deep breath, and then the rest of my life.

If God, existing outside of time, sees my life beginning to end, then from his perspective there is no probability, only certainty. But I, existing within the opaqueness of time, live in a suspended state of faith. I make choices and trust him for the grace to follow through.

So even without seeing the details of the future, I committed it to you. There would be no more trying each other on for size, no more interviewing. Marriage—no longer a question of feeling in love, but rather acting out love. Marriage—an undertaking of faith where only grace can make it last.

Eight years later, we don’t argue as much as we used to. There’s a greater patience, a greater gentleness for each other’s quirks and insecurities. But if I were to be honest, I still struggle to act out my love. I still struggle to love you more than I love myself.

Like our first meeting, there was no singular moment of promise when I chose to love you better. It’s a journey built from a thousand discreet decisions. Sometimes I fail. You fail. But we repent, pray, change, endure, and eventually our paths converge again. As you choose me first, and I choose you, the invisible tie grows stronger. Unbroken and unyielding.

The more I love you, the more I learn to love myself. That’s what I’ll tell our son someday—the secret to any relationship, to real happiness, is to love someone else more.

I used to dream of you, but you’re not what I dreamed of. You’re somehow so much more.

Happy anniversary, my love.