We’ve almost been married for 23 years, I said to Chad last week as he navigated our car through the endless stretch of road in South Dakota.

He turned his head and looked at me as I proudly flashed two fingers and then three fingers, indicating our 23 years of marriage. He didn’t say a word, but continued to glance from me to the wide open space of the road ahead of us until I got the hint that I said something wrong.

Quickly, it dawned on me and I put one finger down and flashed a two and then a two with my fingers and corrected myself, twenty-two years. We’ve almost been married for twenty-two years.

He laughed at me and joked at my inability to get the year right as I do most every year. It’s the year, minus one, I reminded myself out loud. We’ve been married the year minus one.

Twenty-two years.

—

A few days later, as we were driving in and out of phone reception through Wyoming, a voicemail from an unknown number popped up on Chad’s phone. Curious, he hit play through the car speakers and a woman’s voice said something like this:

Hi Chad. You had dropped off a purple and black canvas bag for us to fix and I wanted to let you know that it’s ready to be pick up.

I immediately knew what the woman was talking about and grabbed Chad’s arm, Oh my gosh! You got that fixed?!

Yeah, he said, like it was no big thing.

I turned toward the back of the car where our three kids were buried in iPad movies, coloring books, and scrolling of different sorts and said, Girls, marry someone like your Dad. Charlie, be the kind of husband your dad is.

—

Many, many years ago, in the early days of our marriage, I ran the Columbus marathon and won an age group award for the women’s division. Months after that marathon, A purple and black duffle bag arrived on our doorstep with the words, Columbus Marathon, Women’s Division Age 25-29 Winner (or something like that) written on the side.

There is nothing pretty about this bag. We may pack it if we are going away for a night. Often, one of the kids will take it to this place or that one. We have plenty of luggage and don’t really need this bag. Still, when one of the kids brought it home a few months ago with a broken zipper I was bit bummed knowing it was probably time to let it go.

I put it aside and didn’t think of it again. I didn’t think of it again, that is, until the voicemail played over the speakers in the big sky country of Wyoming.

—

The world has a lot to say about love. Singers sing beautiful ballads about it. Poets try attempt to capture it in verses that stir the heart. Movies draw us in with the drama and candlelight and romance. I just googled the greatest love songs and these lyrics by Celine Dion came up multiple times:

If I kiss you like this
And if you whisper like that
It was lost long ago
But it’s all coming back to me.

There are endless songs, millions of sentiments, books galore, and countless theories on love and marriage and relationships. But nowhere in the middle of an Ed Sheeran song is there a verse that says, he took the duffle bag to the canvas shop.

—

Love songs and movies, I think, do us no favors when we commit to a life together. Love songs don’t often talk of the work or the compromise, or the annoyances or the long winding roads of marriage that mirror the endless roads of South Dakota. Marriage is a commitment. A choice. A lot of work, with a good amount of magic, and a decent amount of luck.

Twenty-two years ago, two kids stood before their friends and families and believed in nothing else but forever. I have no doubt that those two kids were delusional in thinking that the other was perfect and that the road ahead would be nothing but bliss.

Bliss, it has been. But it has been more than that.

It has been bumpy, at times. It has been a road of learning. Learning ourselves and each other. There are no longer delusions of changing each other, but instead, a quiet acceptance of who we are–together and individually.

—

I read these words by Emily P. Freeman in A Million Little Ways:

We try to pack more meaning in the ends and beginnings, but I wonder if the Lord sees them all the same? A daughter’s moment of birth bursts with the same amount of blessings as a Thursday afternoon six years later when she comes home from school and plops her bag on the floor. Isn’t the day we said I do filled with the same kind of wonder as ten years later when we pass the beans and biscuits around our Kmart table? Isn’t the 22nd day of kindergarten equally as monumental as the first and 76th day and the last? Because in each of those days, we live and move and are. Eternity is not for later.

—

Twenty-two years ago I had no idea the gift I was receiving. This life. The “I will” of that day has been an “I will” every day since. And it will be “I will” every day moving forward.

Chad, thank you for the canvas bag. And thank you for the millions of little ‘canvas bags’ through the years. Twenty two years ago, in my wildest dreams, I could have never imagined a life as beautiful as the one we have. I have always felt like the luckiest girl alive to have you.

Thank you for choosing me.

I will always choose you.

Happy Twenty-Three, Minus one.