Today it’s Christmas, and I am five kilodays days into this whole marriage thing. I am still star struck by my beautiful dreamer. Every year, I write on the anniversary card,

“Walk with me.
Stay with me.
The best is yet to be.
This I believe.”

We’re five k down this path, and I am still glad it is you who travels with me. I look at the lives we have touched. I look at the home we have created with all the feelings of safety and belonging we have made for our family.

Each of the five thousand days of our marriage feels as distinct in my muddled mind as steps in a five kilometer run. That is to say, not at all. Yet, the sense of a path through the life each of these days has created remains sharp. Yes, there are moments that stand out like when each of our kids came into our home, but they pale next to the sense of enjoyment thinking about dinners at our kitchen table. Even the poor behaviors are a spice to allow home to feel real.

Life’s not supposed to be perfect or easy. I think of the weeks spent at a time with one kid or another in the hospital. I think of my MS and all that it has wrought. I think of the surgeries and recoveries each of us has gone through.

As I think of these things, I realize there is no one else I would rather walk beside than one who brings with her a beautiful dream for us to live. It’s the vision as a whole with all of it’s booboos, behaviors, kisses and hugs that allows everyone within it to grow.

Now that we have completed a 5k, let’s aim for a marathon. After all, completing a marathon has been on my bucket list for the past 10 years.

Merry Christmas and thank you.

There are times when it feels like stress will tear me apart when panic seems like a new permanent resident within my mind.

When I know I need to switch jobs because I feel there is no way to “succeed,”

When I go home to find stressful behaviors abound and see my wife struggling to maintain her sanity and she asks why I am still in my same stressful job,

When nothing I say or do seems to break through to my son as we discuss the damage of lies for the hundredth time even as we hold seeing the new Star Wars film as a reward for when he stops lying for a week,

When it feels like my mistakes multiply faster than my efforts to repair them can keep up,

When I strain my calf muscle again training for a run in June…

It is in this environment, that I have to follow through with my decision to switch medications from one that has stabilized my MS for the past 8+ years. I am stopping Tysabri that brought me from unable to exercise beyond a rowing machine. I appreciate the rowing machine because when I fell, it was only 6 inches and meant it was time to get back on the machine. While on Tysabri, I have been able to run and run and run. Thanks to Tysabri, I am going to run a half marathon in June (calf is healing on schedule).
It’s funny, but as I feel myself panic at set backs and fight the urge to hang my head with a sigh of exasperation, I find myself retreating back into the words I use to drive me forward on my challenging runs.

“Failure is not an endpoint unless we make it one. Failure is a milestone to be used going forward, to measure our progress on future attempts.”

It is only then that I am able to slow down my mind’s pace and see some of the great things happening around me. I might screw up. I may fail often, but there are some wonderful things worth pausing to enjoy whether it is a rainbow clear enough to see all of the colors distinctly or my blind daughter laughing as she tries to move her egg down the white house lawn swinging her spoon nowhere near the egg.

Just make the choices the best way I know. Put in the effort. Then kick em up and hobble slowly…