There he was, that stranger I had talked long with after our college workdays and fantasized of his arms round me. The stranger to whom I had made ridiculous promises I could never keep in a tiny white church before we knew how easily we could break and be broken. The stranger I lay down trembling before on our wedding night, becoming naked before him for the rest of our lives.
As he half jumped down the little ladder from his cockpit to wrap arms around his sons, scoop his daughter up, and kiss me, I knew I didn’t know a fraction of the depths of him.
There with the sky our chapel, and his smile breaking open all I wanted to forget and was afraid to hope for – there I knew I loved him and that we could be good.
Because why not? He had flown an ocean back to me, and our days lay ahead. Why not believe the best, forget the rest and slip my dress off in the dark of our room, naked with him a stranger once again?
We held each other as if it was the first night, because four months coming home will remind you that nothing beats life’s whisper that “There is still time.”
And each time since then we have stepped into the embrace of the only one we will know, into the arms of another that we cannot presume to ever fully know.
Because it takes seeing each other like you haven’t every day for the past fifteen years, to know what you have.
And because grace forgets well-worn paths of hurt and fear. Grace breathes the life of mystery and possibility. Grace says I know you have hurt me and I you, but have we even really met the deepest parts of us? Grace lies down naked before my husband like we never met and invites him to be my closest friend.
*the song illuminate by the Hunts – it’s so worth three minutes of your day
– Images were created by the amazing dorka hegedus. I cannot express what a treasure these images are to us, capturing so much of what we have lived and felt in this military lifestyle. She is a true professional and artist, shooting in a documentary style that let us experience the precious moments of this homecoming without interruption while also capturing portraits that I will hold dear for the rest of my life. As a photographer I have had many experiences in the photography world, and I can emphatically say that if you never experience Dorka creating images of you then you are missing out on something very special.
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This article originally appeared at SharonMcKeemanblog.com.
