What does romance look like when you’ve been married lots of years?

It looks like this.

Yesterday was hard. There was a ton of commotion around back to school and room changes and a small flood in our basement. It was 8:30pm and somehow I still hadn’t eaten dinner. I was the kind of tired where I want to eat something now and yet nothing sounds good.

In short I was an exhausted, cranky, hungry mess.

My sweet husband took matters into his own hands.

Despite my grumbling that I didn’t need him to get me anything he went out and got me food.

He surprised me by bringing back all three of the sides I had been agonizing over and it might have made me cry tears of joy.

When we were dating I made him the collage that still hangs over our bed. I cut some crazy ad out that still perfectly sums up this great man I married.

“When she couldn’t decide between the French fries and the mashed potatoes he ordered both. It was then that she just knew.”

And he’s still going strong all these years later.

Young love might believe it’s going to be all about flowers and poetry and expensive gifts and lavish vacations. It’s not.

It’s about choosing to go out after a hard days work and buy your exhausted wife 3 sides at Arby’s because you know that small gesture will show her you love her.

It’s finding that thing that tells the other person you see them. You know them. And you go out of your way show them in seemingly small ways that you still choose them.

It’s keeping small pieces of your history alive in the middle of children and soggy basements and ridiculous ill timed projects.

The world talks about moms having so much to do…this mom couldn’t do half of it without this wonderful side-buying-man that holds her up in a million different ways.

Here’s to love in the middle years, in so many ways better than ever my friends.