Today Ben and I celebrated our 8th anniversary. We didn’t have anything special planned because it’s a Tuesday night and we’ve had some pretty bad weather in our area. I’m pretty weird in that I’m not big on going anywhere, out to eat or otherwise when it’s too cold or raining. I know, I know.
I thought tonight would be like most anniversary celebrations, we’d exchange sweet notes or letters after I made us a fun dinner and that would be about it. That is until my husband brought me this package. Before I tell you what was in it, let me tell you some back story. When Ben and I were in college and freshly engaged, we found a super cute house to rent near where we were in school. We spent the first 2 years of our marriage in this house. It was a drafty old duplex but I loved that it had original hard wood flooring and windows in it. There are so many memories in that house, we often talk about the sweet, simple times we had there as well as some of the crazy knock down drag out fights from our first year of marriage. Thankfully, we can joke about it now, because Lord have mercy those were some intense emotional days. The Lord is faithful though and we survived. We refer to it as the blue house.
Fast forward to tonight, 6 years since we have moved out and I open my present. My sweet, thoughtful husband handmade me a picture frame from one of the old boards from the blue house. Evidently, after we had moved out they decided to redo the flooring and threw out some of the old boards. Ben was driving by one day and saw them in the trash. Being the sentimental man he is, he grabbed a few, hoping to use them for something to remind of those first years.
I won’t lie. I ugly cried for about 15 minutes. You know, the sobbing, sniffling, gasping for air ugly cried. The print says, “Love Grows Best in Little Houses” and what you might not be able to see is the roof is made out of love letters he wrote to me and the word LOVE is made out of letters I wrote to him when we were dating. I just don’t even know what to say. I joked on twitter that he made me the most thoughtful gift in the world and all I made was dinner. If our house was burning down, I’d grab our children and this gift. I’m not sure how he’ll ever top this.
It just goes to show you, the best things in life really are free. This gift, such thoughtfulness, it’s worth more than gold. Thank you, Lord, for my Ben.
