Ten

Ten years of an abiding covenant made by a couple of weak (oh, how little we understood just how weak we were when we said I do) sinners madly in love.

 Ten years of God sustaining those weak sinners and holding fast their covenant when everything in and around them threatened to break it. 

Ten years of a love growing into something deeper than either of us could fathom when we wed.

Nine

Nine years of a lifelong disability that redirected our lives and thrust our navel-gazing eyes up to our Creator, Owner and Lover

Eight

Eight brain surgeries that forced us to our knees in prayer and shaky trust in our heavenly Father. 

Seven 

Seven years of being parents — a role full of responsibility, self-sacrifice, laughter, tears, joy, frustration, and just about every other descriptive noun in the English language. It’s the gift that keeps on giving (diaper joke, get it?) 

Six

Six months of official dates before the only six full months of able-bodied marriage we may ever know. 

Were they great months? Absolutely.

 Do I miss able-bodied marriage? Nearly every day.

Would I trade the past 114 months of wheelchair-bound marriage for the ease of those six? Never. 

Five 

Five Bargerons in Michigan. One import plus one Michigander born with a different last name that God brought together and made into one, plus…
                                                                     one
                                                                                  two
                                                                                                three
                                                                                                           … little natural-born Michigander Bargerons.

Four 

Four parents who sat, cried and prayed with us the day of our accident and have been behind us every day since. Gary and Beth Bargeron, Jim and Debi Davis.
Without these two couples who raised us to be who we are, there would scarcely be two ones. We owe our five, three, two, and health of our ten largely to these precious four.  

Three 

Three amazing and beautiful kids that God has blessed us with and charged us to raise well. 

Two 

Two weak sinners God has graciously led through the tempest to catch us in His arms of tender love every time we stumble and fall. We spent a little over twenty years of our lives as simply two individuals. But the evening of May 4th, 2012, we became…

One 

One love, one Lord, one marriage, we are one. Anyone familiar with the novel Jane Eyre will recognize one of my favorite quotes —
 “God pardon me!” he subjoined ere long; “and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her.”

What God has joined together, let not man separate.