Happy Birthday, Ellie

Today is my wife's birthday. We have decided that between the need to celebrate the Texas Tech offer, the need to have a lovely date, and the birthday itself that we shall go to the Melting Pot with a couple of friends. We save it for really special occasions -this will only be our third trip. Still, for a wife as wonderful as mine, it was easy to want to treat her.

She has supported me every step of the way in pursuing my dream. Through the sudden flight to California, the applications to so many schools, the reading of academic literature ad nauseum, the trips to two schools, the recounting of numerous conversations and interviews with professors and students - she has encouraged me constantly. With the sudden decision to sell our home last summer before the first applications were even started, the exodus to in-laws, the later move to a tiny rental home, the fight with mice, dealing with so much of our stuff being in storage for all these months - she has kept her chin up. Now we face the prospect of having to move in to a tiny house, if we're even lucky enough to get a loan for one, and she has remained positive and faithful. We both know the Lord has had a great hand in all these steps - I feel like I ought to write a post just to list them for myself one more time - and yet she helped me remember him one more time, "Robert, if God wants you to go to Texas Tech, then should you wait for the offer to start turning down other schools?" She was right: I needed to be willing to have faith, but just as I made the commitment to do just what she suggested, the offer came (another miracle time amazingly).

This is a post about her, though, not me. I marvel at my wife some days. She does so much to raise our three beautiful children right. She works with each of them to make sure they get what they need. She spends hours thinking of those needs. She wears herself out and gives up so much of herself to do these things. I just hope I haven't kept her like a caged bird in this small town these past few years. I know being in a college town will invigorate her as much as it will me. I am looking forward to the first day we move in. For now, I will simply continue to count my blessings for her patience and understanding. I still don't always know what took me so long to follow this dream. She's known it was meant to be since we met, really, or at least since I was in graduate school before. She's never let me forget it, and I love her for believing in me.

So to my wife, on your birthday, my love, thank you for these six years we've been together, nearly six years of marriage, and more than seven of wonderful friendship. Thank you for being who you are. Most of all, thanks for marrying me.

-- Robert