Her
2026.38
Three hours ago, we were married, surrounded by hundreds of folks. Now we’re alone, piercing the August night on I-185 northbound.
Starving, we searched the food basket in vain. No utensils. We ripped the steak by hand, scooped shrimp and grits from a container, laughing as we hurtled away from home in the late hours of August 10, 2002.
Driving in my gold Ford Taurus on the winding roads, how insignificant we must look from above. Within those four doors, though small on this darkened earth, we were everything to each other in that moment, yet nothing at the same time. We were at ease with one another, familiar, while also strangers.
Marriage, love, we’d learn, is a revelation.
In those years, I struggled with the concept of love, wondering even how to define it. How would I know if I felt it? If I were in it? We’re surrounded by this societal image of love, a ubiquitous definition of a range of ebullient emotions. Love as a feeling, an emotion, a projection of passions, affections. Love’s something one’s swept up in uncontrollably, like casting off on a rafting trip, riding the ravishing whitewater in an adrenaline rush. You’re paddling, but the river is in control.
Love, I perceived, was beyond anything you can control. Love happened to you. You fell into it by way of a transformation that’s a metaphysical shift in control.
Approaching Atlanta in the darkness, planes dotting the dark black sky on final approach, I replayed the day in my head. Hours earlier, I’d said, I do. I said before God and everyone assembled that I’d love her forever. I meant it. I gave her that ring I could barely afford, with all that I was. That ring, now on her finger, is resting in my hand. All that I have. Looking over, I could see her face backlit by the interstate’s lights and the lights of passing cars. I vowed to honor you.
I summoned, as I so often did, the familiar expectation of believing a feeling marked the significance of the moment. In a rush, all the emotions came at once, seeking clearance to land simultaneously. Gratitude, fear, anxiety, excitement, peace, insecurity, combined with moments of fleeting clarity.
From those planes passing above, we’re atoms in motion below. Electrons bouncing from one place to another, ostensibly insignificant. One of seemingly millions of others on the road. A single, minuscule car on a planet in a universe too massive to measure.
The same blackness greeted us the following morning as we loaded practically all our clothes onto the hotel shuttle. Less than 12 hours since we were married, in the quiet of the Atlanta airport, our honeymoon ahead of us, I sat with her beside me, wondering what the fuck had happened.
Lost in expectations of an emotional high, I was instead confronted with the gravity of my responsibility. Will one’s feet touch the floor on a honeymoon was replaced by the reckoning that I was now a husband. I’d vowed to be her husband.
It crept in. Doubt and insecurity arrived, joined by that familiar imposter syndrome, wondering if I had what it took to be her husband. In the quiet afterglow, I knew such strength was within her, but I was terrified, unsure whether I could be her husband. Yet she seemed so sure I was the one for her. If she believed in me, maybe I was worthy.
Her love would prove a revelation.
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One can get sideways pursuing the societal projection of love. The one laced with romanticism and emotion and feelings. The love I anticipated feeling had been bent through the prism of society, and it would be years before I could distinguish love’s true dispersion.
Love, I’d come to learn, is the disciplined work of willing that love into being. Love is in the choice.
Awaiting our plane, bound for Jamaica, romantic, that’s what I was supposed to be. Gushing over the emotional high, soaring on the jet’s wings in the stratus clouds of love. A man of certainty, wild at heart, fighting for and protecting his wife for life. It’s what a new husband feels on a honeymoon.
Inside, I was none of those things. Grateful, humbled that she chose me. I loved her, I was certain. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
But I was unmoored, adrift.
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Even in Jamaica, I didn’t feel romantic. I felt inadequate. A poser. Unworthy of her. Worse, I believed I was unable to provide for her. Unworthy to rise to her level. That I’d made a mistake on her behalf. The mistake had nothing to do with her, though. She was perfect in body and soul. The mistake was me marrying her, because I wasn’t worthy of her.
Deep within I inventoried my anxieties, shortcomings, and insecurities. I knew them well, keenly aware of what a weak man was within. I was terrified she’d figure that out.
What I didn’t know then was that, despite my self-doubt, somewhere within me was a strength she saw. Hidden, yet visible to her, was evidence of that flicker of virtue I’ve written about. An ember she sought to turn into a virtuous fire by looking inward.
Her love would orient and guide me to my truth within. She’d usher me along, such that I’d discover that one’s fortitude is within.
Simultaneously, she was striving for her vision of love. We both loved each other. We’d committed to each other, but she was acting in love. At the same time, I was seeking to feel love.
Some truths are only proven in time.
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I could’ve read all the societal signs wrong. But I equated success in pursuing God, relationships, friendships, whatever, as a feeling that confirmed the action.
What I was learning as I navigated life’s paths was that the feelings were fleeting.
As I look back on that I realize, through her, I was learning precisely what love is.
While I couldn’t articulate it then, I was arrested by the depth of my responsibility. I took the vows seriously. I knew the grammatical meanings of the word, but I didn’t understand the gravitas of how these words, when lived, changed the life first of the person you love, then you second. I’d missed the meaning and ramifications in chasing the feeling. Vows are lived. Love is earned. One says their vows in their wedding, then you spend the rest of your life honoring your word.
Walking those early years, hand in hand with her, I couldn’t appreciate the complexities of actual love beyond the feeling. It would take years to learn that love is gritty, blunt, profane, serene, sometimes on the same day. Sometimes in the same hour.
I think of us on our honeymoon, alone in Jamaica, bright eyed, loving one another, but having no idea what that meant beyond the wedding and the immediate life together. Feelings as fleeting as the sunset we watched over the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
Gorgeous, stunning as it was, that sun would go down and blackness would reign. That night’s blackness was only interrupted by the generosity of the moon, or the ferocity of the dancing stars’ reflection. Mirroring the reflections of better and worse.
Love, I’d see through her, counters physics. It builds, it climbs, it asks everything, before returning an enlightenment outside one’s current understanding.
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In my years with her, I’d learn the romantic worldview is a lie.
Within this romantic construct life befalls you. Salvation, wealth, health, fortune. Eventually, I’d go to war with this worldview.
Agency is having the will to pursue this love beyond feelings, and the efficacy in the relationship to walk it, even if each side isn’t aware how they’re serving the other.
The results of this work are gradual. There is no epiphany. But I did feel a warmth in my soul from this vantage point. In seeing myself anew through the refracted prism of her love.
When one believes in you and loves you first, that ember begins to burn. As the fire began to burn, I thought, perhaps I do have what it takes.
In her, I saw the courageous power of love’s work. Of her consciously choosing what life should be, then working like hell to bring it to reality.
In the quiet after giving birth, I’d see her sitting up in bed. Gently holding the child she’d just delivered, softly singing them into life, even though she’d been awake for days and endured the delivery without pain medicine. She’d endured unimaginable pain, yet exuded calm, peace, and love.
And as we added more kids to the mix, I’d marvel at how she sought to follow her intuition for motherhood, executing her vision rather than what was modelled. Chasing her vision rather than the adolescent lived reality.
Deep within her soul she envisioned the life of her husband and family, seeking to create what wasn’t modelled for her.
Watching her allowed me to be a better version of myself. She gave me the grace to grow up, seeing me for always more than I currently am. A work in progress then. Now light years from where I was, now possessing the tools to excavate my mind, manifest virtue, and be a man worthy of her devotion.
I am proof of her love. Of her devotion. And, now looking back on my progress, I’m proud of where I am, while deeply grateful for her. And more in love with her.
The feelings I once pursued are on the other side of the work.
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Grace emanates from her in a purified glow of what I imagine surrounds God.
Equanimity steadies her soul, radiating peace.
Her steadiness provides rest for others, despite the restlessness placed upon her upbringing.
With her, disorder shifts to order, even as she comes from a place of seismic tension. There’s serenity in her presence.
Her fortitude, the sheer force of her will, is an awakening. Striving beyond feelings to implement her vision. Blending subconscious action with her aspiration for love became our familial construct. She wills love and peace and the fruits of home into existence, without having been given a seed to plant herself.
She envisioned the fabric, threads, tapestry of our family’s love. Long after I realized it, I’d seen the embodiment of love’s definition alive in her. Within her I witnessed love.
From the ferocity of bearing children without self-regard. To the brutality of a night of repeated hours, to figuring it out alone with such grace. To the selfless belief in her husband. To her awe-inspiring capacity for forgiveness. She is love personified.
Love in the moment is often work outwardly focused. It’s pain. Toil. Sleepless nights. Difficult conversations. Resetting of relationships. Yet love is also courage. It’s virtue. It’s doing what’s right, sometimes directly against how it feels. It’s truth.
For me and the kids, she’s our sun, the centripetal force in our lives. She’s my force of attraction, my gravitational pull. She’s our universal center.
Our power is drawn from being loved by her.
She willed our family, our home, and somewhere in the building of it, she willed me into a man.
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Her love also shifted my definition of home.
Safe with her my soul is at rest. She’s a harbor. That place where she sees the anxieties, insecurities, and flaws, and chooses to love anyway, allowing me to transcend the stifling bonds that restricted me.
I am who I am because of her love. Through her, I’ve learned what love is.
Love, through devotion and work, has the power to manifest more from within than we first believe is there. The love that suffused from her heart filled my veins, pulsed within my heart.
Her love, seeing within what I couldn’t see myself, granted me safe passage on a journey of self-discovery.
With my eyes closed, I imagine us walking along that same beach in Jamaica in 2002. I can see the purity of her young face, sun kissed skin from a day laying out. Curly hair swaying in the Caribbean wind as the cool evening settles in. She’s walking with her feet in the water, gently kicking the waves, our hands within each other’s, arms gently swaying as we walk.
As that version of myself wrestles with questions of feelings and fear, I want to whisper to him through the breeze that the answer to his life is beside him. That she’s home for his soul, which will answer the questions in due time. Tell him to work. It’ll make sense once you realize the feelings come after the moment.
I am mine, but only because I was first hers.
At last, they discover that all which at first drew them together — those once sacred features, that magical play of charms — was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffolding by which the house was built; and the purification of the intellect and the heart, from year to year, is the real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and wholly above their consciousness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
