My wedding vows

Abe and I married each other on November 19, 2016.

These are my vows. :)

I’ve called you my strong-hearted joy chaser, and it’s true: your strength of heart is something I’ve seen you build, fiber by fiber, in the pursuit of authentic joy, the kind you can feel down deep below the smile.

I promise to enable you in this: to lift burdens together, to test and strengthen our hearts side by side, working in tandem for the joy that runs true.

The moment I felt your heart’s passion, your inner voice, I knew that yours was an essence I could trust, could build with, could adventure with. And so I trusted you with everything, and you repaid me in kind — and we found ourselves with an abundant love that spilled over and lept again and touched everything we saw.

I promise to keep on giving you my trust, freely and fully, and to forever honor your trust in me.

We have already been through a fair amount of everything — joy and sorrow and the hope after, life and death and a breath after. And I’ve seen the difference between a trial and a betrayal, for we’ve been and been through both.

I promise to protect you, in body and mind and heart, to hold your future as precious, and to see you back through to the light every time we falter.

We’ve traveled thousands and thousands of miles (just a ridiculous number of miles), marked clouds and roads and sidewalks as our own, and we’ve seen the journey through with so many other human hearts, some as companions and some as journeys in and of themselves.

I promise to earnestly seek the adventure before us, wherever it takes us, and to see love lived out in every motion, together with you.

You have reminded me, not unkindly, that I am a Bowen. And that this is incredible and a great honor, but also that maybe not everything is so serious all the time.

I promise to laugh, and to let go.

I believe fervently and firmly that our best days are yet to come.

And I promise not to wait for them. I will live and love as best I can, today, right now, right here, with you, forever.