I accept you Paige...

Today is August 3, 2007. Five years ago, she said "I do." So did I. For five years, she's been my beautiful bride. At my side, through it all, and I continue to fall more and more in love with her each and every day.

We fell in love, she waited...and waited...and waited, and I finally asked her to marry me on a nervous day on top of Georgia's Stone Mountain. Even though we were already planning how our wedding would be, I still managed to surprise her with that proposal and that ring. She said yes and we embraced and she cried. Afterward, I asked a passerby if he would take our picture. I told him that I just asked her to marry me. With the most serious look of curiosity, he asked me what she said. I still laugh at that. Would I have wanted to document the moment with a picture had she said no? What kind of masochist did he think I was?

A few short months later, we stood in the small church in Fernandina Beach, Florida, and we exchanged vows:

I accept you Paige,
as a person, and as my wife,
with your strengths and your weaknesses.
I promise to be loyal to you in health
or illness,
to share what I have and who I am,
to love enough to risk being hurt,
to trust when I misunderstand,
to weep with you in sorrow,
to celebrate with you in joy,
and to live with you in reverence.