Friday, February 7, 2014

Becoming family

I'm currently reading Shauna Niequist's Cold Tangerines and its been an enjoyable, easy read. Her chapter on becoming family with her husband Aaron resonates with my love for Matt. I'm so thankful we're in this together. 


"...On that hot shimmering night, one of the things I said to Aaron in our wedding vows was 'When I am with you, wherever we are are, I am home.' It was, I thought, a beautiful and romantic thing to say, and I really felt it. Aaron has a way of settling me down and making peace in me when everything feels crazy and alien. The more time I spent with him when we first met, the stronger and more peaceful I felt, like I had eaten a delicious and nutritious breakfast...

I had thought that we became a family the day we were married. What I have found, though, is that the web starts as just one fine filament on that day, and spins and spins around us as life presents itself to us day by day. And on some days, the strands spin around us double-time, spinning us life a top and binding us like rubber cement...
Its hard to imagine now, now that we have been married for five years, now that we live in another state, in our home, one with space for me and space for him. Now we are, certainly, family. Aaron is my first thought and last thought, the companion with whom I walk through every part of life...

That's how family gets made. Not by ceremonies or certificates, and not by parties and celebrations. Family gets made when you decide to hold hands and sit shoulder to shoulder when it seems like the sky is falling. Family gets made when the world becomes strange and disorienting, and the only face you recognize is his. Family gets made when the future obscures itself like a solar eclipse, and in the intervening darkness, you decide that no matter when happens in the night, you'll face it as one. 

And so, Aaron, thank you for becoming, and for being, my family. Thank you for persuading me to take back the chairs, and thank you for sitting with me that night, and thousands of nights since then, watching and listening to our world change, with two sets of eyes and ears instead of one. Thank you for the millions of ways you have been my family since then, but especially, thank you for being my family that night."

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