Seventeen

Seventeen years ago the skies were gray just as they are today. We kept waiting for the sun to break through the gloom, but it never did. Instead, it started to rain lightly just as we left the church. I remember turning my face up into the rain and laughing. I remember you smiling and shaking your head at my laughter.

We were so very young then, and yet I had walked into that church an hour earlier completely sure of the promises we were making. I might have walked up that aisle a bit nervously, but once my hand was in yours the nerves faded away. Then we walked out through those doors and the warm June rain began to fall.

I’ve looked up at the gray skies all say today and remembered that day. I’ve thought about the years that followed our wedding – the hard years when we wondered if it was worth it and the harder years when we clung to each other and knew for certain that it was.

Several times today it has started to sprinkle and I have grinned in remembrance of that mad dash to your truck when the reception was over and the sight we must have been – a drenched bride and groom laughing as we dashed into the hotel lobby.

This day is so similar in feel to that one seventeen years ago, and with every memory I become ever more certain that the wisest thing I ever did was to marry my beloved on that overcast day in June.