Hi you,

How quickly another year just blew right on by. Happy birthday to you, my sexy love, my source of strength and stability, my greatest joy. Doesn’t it feel strange to have lived three and a half decades on this earth, where we are now too old to make excuses for any of our decisions, yet not old enough to have accumulated enough wisdom to know exactly what we’re doing?

One thing I am sure of though is that with you by my side, and me by yours, we can navigate through the sands of time and all its surprises together. Time is such an interesting concept. The world never seems to stop reminding us of how short our time on earth can be and how precious it is. And in this life with you, time seems to take on a whole different set of characteristics.

Time stands still for an extra moment when you gently cradle my tired mind in the palm of your hands. It slows down ever so slightly when my body is curled up in the safety of yours. It moves quickly forward when we dive into conversations exploring all the potential we are creating together.

In the last twenty one months, you have effectively shaped who I am today through all your love and tlc. You are my present in every sense of the word, and you are undoubtedly what makes up my future. You've become the first person I run to when I need connection and warmth. You're the first person I lay eyes on the moment I wake up and the last person I feel right before I fall asleep each day, and having your sweet embrace bookend the first and last moments of my days is something I will forever be grateful for.

There are very few moments in life that stay with you. It's the moments of irrationality, the few moments of suspending logic, the moments of faith. And I am extremely thankful for that moment in Hawaii when you chose to agree to a life with me forever.

As I put our beautiful ring on every day, I'm reminded of the cyclical nature of time and what that means for us. Every day, twenty-four hours pass by, just to come full circle and repeat again. As do the seasons. As do the years. But as we grow old with the seasons' rhyme, I promise to always hold your heart in mine, and together we’ll create countless moments that will be etched in not just our own lives, but the lives of others.

And when the day comes when we are nothing but specks of dust on earth, our legacy will continue to live on in the form of the wonderful human beings we would have raised together through those moments we’ve created that stay within them. Now if the weight of the titles and implied responsibilities that come with them becomes too much, and should we get crushed by the weight, I wouldn't have preferred another way than to have attempted to carry them all together with you.

Closing this with something that perfectly describes how I feel about you in words that are better than I can ever express:

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.”

Love always,

Mags