Twelve Years!

Today's our wedding Anniversary.
Sergei and I have been married twelve years! This morning when I woke up it was dark outside, a storm was heading our way. Twelve years ago on our wedding day I woke up to a terrible storm and within a couple hours tornado sirens. Our whole wedding was planed outdoors; the ceremony and the reception. Everything blew away and family and friends scrambled to regroup and start over.

By 10am the sky cleared and the ceremony was quickly set up again back outdoors. I walked down the aisle to marry Sergei with the sun shinning brightly. God rolled away the clouds. Lovely. We said our vows in Russian and it wasn't until I lived in Ukraine for three years that I really understood all the words to my commitment to to Sergei.

Everything that could go wrong on a wedding day did. My family still talks about that day, all the things they didn't even tell us about so as not to worry us. We were obliviously happy after the tornado rolled through, laughing and enjoying our guests, stopping off at a rest stop on our way to our honeymoon destination to make out, because, well, we could.

Our married life has seen eight moves in twelve years, an ectopic pregnancy, three live births three different ways; an epidural, natural water birth and c-section, the shock of Polly's diagnosis of Down syndrome and then just earlier this year Moyamoya; being missionairies in Kiev, adopting Evangeline and pastoring two churches.

For fear of sounding extremely hokey, I'll abstain from providing the usual cliches regarding my marriage (you know, my best friend, love of my live, etc..).

But I will say it's been good.

Really good.

Happy Anniversary buddy!