My Whole Life Long

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is my favorite poet. She is in fact the only poet whose poetry I remember from all of the thousands of poems I read during my days as a student of literature. Elizabeth used simple words to describe serious emotions and had a practical perspective on life's most impractical emotion. Even before I knew what true love was, I knew that the love she described would be exactly the kind of love I would feel.

Recently, I was rereading some of her poetry. I came across a line that, just as I expected, perfectly describes the love that I feel for my husband. "You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long."

In high school, I wanted to marry a cowboy from Texas so that the Dixie Chics could come to our wedding and sing an acoustic version of "Cowboy Take me away." In college, I wanted to marry a stockbroker and live in a condo on 5th Avenue. In my early twenties, I wanted to marry a mormon from Utah so we could spend our lives going on missions to help the needy.

But a few months after my 25th birthday, I walked into a restaurant and shook hands with a man that I met on CatholicMatch.com. He was tall and strong and handsome. He had less hair than I imagined. But from the moment I looked in his eyes, I knew he possessed the type of love only found in the verses of Elizabeth's poems. The type of love I was always meant to share. Immense and simple. Passionate and practical.

It has been 5 years since I met my husband. 5 amazing years. 5 busy years. Not the life I daydreamed about sitting in my desk during High School English. Not the life I imagined walking through the Main Quad at Stanford. Not the life I planned as I rode the bus to work through downtown San Francisco.

My husband isn't a cowboy, or a stockbroker or a mormon missionary. He isn't perfect, but he is perfect for me. He is the love of my wonderfully imperfect life.

And love was what inspired my favorite poet to write line after line of beautifully real poetry. Its love that makes living in Morgan Hill just as exciting as living in a condo on 5th Avenue. I am grateful that the first time I looked into Norm's eyes, I realized that his love was what would make my life, whatever or wherever that life may be, the life that I dreamed of my whole life long.