Say it again, this time with evidence

Ten years ago I promised you my whole heart. Today I return it, upgraded by every day since. It has been through the moves and the mistakes, the promotions and the losses, the 3 a.m. worries and the Sunday morning ease, and it comes back to you more certain than it has ever been. I know more now about what I was promising. I know marriage is not the wedding but the thousand small repairs, the apologies, the second chances, the choosing again. So I renew my vows with open eyes. I promise to keep working at us, because you are worth every ounce of the work. I promise to keep liking you, which has turned out to be the easiest promise I ever made. And I promise the next ten years my full attention, my full heart, and my full yes. I loved you then. I love you more now. Happy anniversary, my darling. Let us keep going.

We made it through the years we do not talk about much, and I choose you on the other side of them. That is not a small sentence. It cost us both more than anyone in this room will ever know, and it taught me something no easy year could: I do not love you because it is easy. I love you because you are you, and because what we built is worth every hard thing it took to keep it. So today I renew my vows with both hands. I promise to keep choosing repair over being right. I promise to keep turning toward you, especially when turning is hard. I promise to guard what we have, because I know exactly what it is worth. And I promise to let the good years ahead be soft ones, full of the ease we earned. We are still here. We are still us. And I am still, completely, yours.

Twenty-five years ago I said yes. I have been saying it every morning since, in coffee made the way you like it, in hands reached for across the console, in every hard conversation we did not walk away from. A quarter of a century, and you are still the person I want to tell things to first. Still the laugh I look for in a crowded room. Still my favorite everything. So today, in front of the people who have watched our story grow up, I say it again with the full weight of everything I now know: yes. I promise to keep being curious about you. I promise to keep holding your hand through whatever the next chapter brings, because my hand has learned the shape of yours. And I promise that when we finally run out of days, my last thought will be gratitude for every one I spent as yours. I love you. I renew it all. Happy anniversary.