Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder ...

So do you remember when you first started dating your 'love'? You just couldn't get enough of each other, right?! Talking on the phone for hours and never running out of things to say ... getting yourself all prettied up to go out on dates ... gushing to your friends about how great your guy is ... patiently (or impatiently in my case) waiting through seemingly never ending days until until you could reunite with this person ...Whether you went through this forty years ago, fifteen years ago or two years ago, we have all been through it or will go through it at some point in our romantic lives ... but then we get married and slowly things change. I'm not saying things change for the worse but that passion tends to decrease a little as time goes on. The endless "i love you" at the end of a phone call turns into a quick, "love ya!" The date nights sometimes fail to come up as often as they used to. We get comfortable, which can be ok ...

I have been lucky to have been through a brief separation from my husband. Lucky, you ask?! Let me assure you this was not a separation of the relationship just a physical separation as Senior Airman trained in the Air Force. During the past five months we have constantly been telling each other what a blessing it has been to be apart as we have "re-learned" how to bring the eagerness for one another back into our relationship. Before he left we seldom fought, and were very comfortable in our crazy life of parenting three little girls and running back and forth between all the activities in our life. We were happy but life was settled and in a routine ...

I would say after Senior Airman had been gone for a week all of a sudden I realized that I cannot live without him! I mean taking care of the girls was fairly easy, frustrating and tiring at times but there was no problem there, I could handle it ... but living without my best friend was unbearable. I went through a range of emotions associated with missing him. He wasn't just gone, he was out of contact. No phone calls except one ten minute call a week, no emails, no texts, nothing except old fashioned letters written with a pen and paper and mailed with a stamp ... I am such a romantic, I love letters, flowers, dates, the works - Senior Airman is not a romantic bottom line. I wrote him everyday he was in boot camp - EVERY day! All of a sudden a week after he left I started receiving those things called letters back ... not just letters, LOVE letters. Wow, I wasn't aware he had it in him! The things that came out of the man's mouth (or what he wrote on paper I should say) were brilliant! I was almost a little shy when I read them. I am certain I blushed more then once. I now have them neatly kept in a special place where I will forever keep and treasure them. Oddly enough, our time apart was really starting to seem like it was strengthining our relationship and helping us to appreciate each other and all we were so much more.

After boot camp was over, I got phone calls everyday and it was like we were dating all over again. I waited all day to get those calls and then we would talk for hours. Each call began with, "hello my beautiful wife!", which was out of norm by far. He still wrote me letters and some emails too. Then one day he got all quiet and told me that he had been thinking long and hard and he really wanted us to renew our vows ... he wanted our friends, families and everyone there. He wanted to tell the world how much he treasured me and was wildly in love with me. I was stunned ... typically it is the wife who suggests this and it comes around ten or twenty five years of marriage. We are only coming up on year six and HE suggested it - not only a mere suggestion mind you, this was a full fledged plea! I knew he was serious when a couple weeks later he asked again. I was so giddy I felt like he was asking me for the first time again!!! Apparently Senior Airman had been seeing me and our marriage in a whole new light just as I had been. We were falling in love all over again ...

Next week he comes home and I am beyond excited! I feel like I just went through the whole dating thing again. My heart has beat extra hard, my love has grown even deeper and now he gets to come home to me! I am blissfully excited and honestly don't feel like I am welcoming home my husband ... I feel like I am a newly wed about to begin life with the one I love.

I'm not sure that the vow renewal will happen this year, though he is pressing hard but I do know that public formality or not our vows are newly renewed in our hearts and our marriage has grown in leaps and bounds over the past five months. If I had the choice to do it all over again and face life alone for five months I would jump at the chance! The old adage "absence makes the heart grow fonder" rings true ... better then true ... life changing ... marriage changing ...

Maybe you should think twice before you come knocking on my door for the next few weeks ... I am after all in newly wed mode! Just kidding ... well maybe not ... :)