because motives matter
This year Katie's birthday post includes a surprise gathering, a long marriage, and a poem about boundary stones and covenant love. Sometimes a birthday is less about getting older and more about noticing the ground you’ve been given to stand on.
Over 20 years ago we discovered that tea made us slow down, and that’s what we need. The whole process— measuring and filtering and waiting— is a metaphor for the intentionality of marriage itself.
We wouldn’t do it again, at least not the same way. Or advise it. There was stress and silence. And there was anger and hurt. Family pictures don't tell the whole story.
That evening I told her I loved her for the first time. She already knew the next thing I would do was ask her to marry me.
Maturing, married love is rooted in a shared story and refreshed by a new commitment, often in the full shadow of our failures. It involves learning to linger again.
the daysman 