February; two birthdays and an anniversary

We had our first anniversary on the 22nd.

A funny thing has happened here, I have gotten used to my beloved sporting a high-powered assault rifle everywhere, she is strangely unfinished without it to me, which is disturbing, sort of.

I have learned so much in the last 365 days about this artistic and alluring, beautiful and bibliophilic, complex and caring, dynamic and dear to my heart, elegant and Elect, fragile and finely wrought, graceful and gregarious, humorous and hopeful, intricate and intimate, jovial and joyful, knowing and kind-hearted, long-haired and long-suffering, melodious and musical, naive and not naive, omnivorous and OCD, pulchritudinous and precocious, quilting and quippish, refined and real, stunning and sincere, tensile and tender-hearted, unequivocal and unabashed, virtuous and very earnest, wistful and well-intentioned, xenophobic by marriage and xenophilic by nature, youthful and young at heart, zealous and zephyrus creature that I know and love as Rachel.

We have had a raucous, wild, exotic honey-moon and first year together, set apart. I can't think of any couple that has gotten combat pay and hazardous duty pay, been mortared and shot at and been so serendipidously happy, all in their first year of marriage...can you?

The traditional first year anniversary gift is paper so we decided to get each other John MacArthur's Bible commentaries, all 28 volumes.

I have often thought about how when bad things happen to a person they are either hardened OR sweetened by them. I wondered about how Rachel would fare before we came over here. I am happy to report that she has gone without so much, been reduced to her rawer elements and seen the very worst that people can do to each other and through it all she has come out so much stronger and refined from the exposure, deprivation and hardships. It has been fascinating and sometimes painful for me to watch her transform and grow and deal with the things at hand. I think that it is possible to be both sweetened and hardened by things. Which is surprising to me because in my personal experiences it has usually been one or the other, with far less balance and emotional symmetry.

In other related news, we both celebrated our birthdays this month. Rachel turned 161 and I turned 287, in dog years. That's 23 and 41.

Anyway, it has been a good 370 days and counting, I will keep you posted.