I guess you could say we’ve launched into birthday season, full swing. The Bear’s birthday was last Friday, and today it’s the Hubs’ turn. (And mine is just a few weeks away…and then my Mom’s… and a few weeks after that {maybe six?}, Bump the Third will be making her glorious appearance!) But first, it would just be wrong not to stop for a moment right here, to celebrate the awesomeness of the Hero Hubs. Who is available to shoot weddings throughout eastern North Carolina and the surrounding areas, in case you didn’t know that already.

We were interviewed yesterday for a very cool little magazine called The Washington Magazine, where HH and I had the privilege of talking about Quiver Tree Photography, our lives, our kids, our love story and how we met, and it was just so good to reflect briefly. And out of that conversation, the sweet gal who interviewed us ended up also asking some questions leading to featuring us in the “Faith and Family” moment in the Washington Daily News today. So while the magazine story is still a wee while away from print, this little article here has made its online appearance already.

{From that big old trip where he asked that big ol’ question…January 2007!}

I love Mona’s title: Faith, Photos, Finances Unite Couple. And I think those words are the result of us both believing in a very big and very good God, and are the formation of hundreds of tiny decisions, made on a regular basis. Because when life is hard, there are two directions a couple has the choice to head in. They can either allow the tough times to band them together in a we’ll-get-through-this kind of way, or they can allow the tough stuff to put space between them, forging little rifts and wedges that seem to somehow get bigger and bigger over time.

Daily a debtor to grace, friends, this I am sure of — and it is in God’s good grace that we are drawing nearer to Him, and to one another.

It was just an inkling of a suspicion on this day six years ago — on the Hubs’s birthday — when a big group of us went to see the Screwtape Letters being performed on stage during the Edinburgh Festival. And that strong and mysterious fellow whose day we were there to celebrate was sitting at the opposite end of a long row of folks from church, and upon the arrival of my friend and I, he excused himself from his previous company, and came all the way around to the end where I was sitting. I left that evening — a little early because I had a hen-do {bachelorette party} to attend — with this whispering suspicion of a hope that I’d almost let go of, because I’d already had feelings for the guy who I thought was the one for a long time.

And bless his heart, he is the guy who walks in the door after a long day at work, cuddles and wrestles our rambunctious boys and comes all the way ’round again, this time just to the kitchen, to look me in the eyes and give me a kiss and say hello. And I’m so glad six years, three countries and almost-three-kids later, he is still coming to find me.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… Change and movement, suitcases and packing seem a chorus in the song of our lives. But love has been the rhythm, the beat, the lyrics, and the reason to sing.

How joyful I am, in trusting that this song, with my South African Gentleman Cowboy Hubs, is really just getting started. Feel free to head over to Quiver Tree’s page on Facebook to wish him a Happy Day!

Happy Birthday, Hero Hubs! I feel ridiculously fortunate to call you mine.

xCC