Happy Birthday Amanda!

Love.  Peace.  Joy.  Acceptance.  These are just a few of the things that I get to experience everyday with my wife Amanda.

Wishing her a happy birthday is a funny thing.

You try to celebrate her and show her that she is so blessed to be alive another year, to have achieved another milestone.  But with someone as quality as Amanda it turns into a selfish attempt, because I am the one who is better because she has been around another year.  Countless others are impacted by her life day in and day out.  So even in our celebrating of her, we are the ones who are rewarded.  We are blessed.

I keep praying that she doesn’t realize how far I married out of my league.  Maybe she does know, but being the beautiful and godly woman she is, she just lets me play along.  Now with 3 kids, 8 years of marriage under our belts, 14 years of dating, I am more in love with this woman than ever before.  I choose to love her more than ever before.  And I feel more loved than ever before.

Happy birthday, my darling.  While words will never suffice, I pray that my life shows you how grateful I am that you said “yes.”