Ten Years Later

Today marks our 10 year wedding anniversary. I have been feeling nostalgic for weeks, as I can't help but reflect on our time together. We look like such babies when I look back at the photos. I'll share just a few, because this was before digital was popular, so all I have are the real photographs. 

In case you're wondering, we got married at Ragged Point Resort. They call it "the gateway to Big Sur". We found it by accident one day while on a drive to find a lighthouse. Right before we were going to turn around, the road began to climb the jagged mountain and all of a sudden, we found ourselves at a beautiful, little, self-contained Inn overlooking the Pacific. I can't even describe how this place still makes me feel. On one of our pre-wedding visits, Brandon and I hiked down the "at your own risk" trail, which I think might now be permanently closed. Directly down that cliff I'm overlooking, is a tiny private, rocky beach. We don't visit here often enough, because it's out of the way, but it is breathtaking. The hotel rooms face the other side of the cliff, and we slept with our back door cracked open so that we could hear the waves crash on the cliff below. 

 I love the picture above, even though I think I felt silly at the time we took it. Now I see it as perfectly symbolic of us peering out at the long journey laid out before us. We had no idea what was in store for us, good and bad. Marriage is not all roses and fairy tales. At times it is hard work for sure. I look back and think of all that we have faced together in the last ten years. Life would be so much harder without him. Without the man he has become. He told me, after my dad died two years ago, that on the day of our wedding, my dad told him, "I'm not losing a daughter, I'm gaining a son." The memory of my husband meticulously sweeping up glass from where the police had to break down the door to my parents' house to get to my dad, still brings tears to my eyes.

I love this picture that someone snapped of my dad. He was watching our first dance. (Come Away With Me, by Nora Jones) His face and posture of his hands says it all. He was proud. Despite his crazy daughter that picked up and moved to California from Ohio two weeks after she graduated high school, he was proud. I am so thankful that I got him on our wedding day. Looking back, there are several people who were at my small wedding that day, that are no longer with us. A lot of loss can happen in ten years. 

 The joys and the challenges are many, but the reward is worth the work. I can't wait to see what another ten years will bring. I love you, Mr. Baeza.