Reflection's on 13 Years

In no particular order, here are random thoughts on marriage on my 13th anniversary:

1. My wife is HOT!
2. We get married because we think we're in love; but it's in marriage that we discover what it really means to love.
3. My wife is SO FINE!
4. They say that the way to man's heart is through his stomach.  That's partly true.  Robin is the best cook!  It is SO IMPORTANT to have meals together as a couple and as a family.
5. Don't you wish your girlfriend was HOT like my wife?
6. I have stronger feelings of romantic love for Robin after 3 kids and thirteen years of marriage.  (Yes, this is alluding to the other way to man's heart.)
7. It has been in moments of marriage that I actually love another person (Robin) more than myself.  It is in these moments that I get a small taste of the kind of love that God has for us, and that God hopes for us to extent to one another.
8. I'm searching for a word that best describes Robin.  Oh yeah, HOT!
9. Marriage has been God's grace to teach me about His love.
10. Marriage is "Sacramental."  I'm not Catholic, but it is in the sanctity of my marriage that I am continually learning what it means to remain faithful to one to whom I've given my life, to think of this other first, to put her needs before my own, to lay down my life every moment of every day.
11. After 13 years of marriage the experiences of my life do not seem real unless shared with Robin.  Food is better with her.  Movies are funnier with her.  Thoughts are not complete until shared with her.  It's weird.
12. Robin does WAY better without me than I do without her.  She had NO IDEA what she was getting into when I decided to "leave and cleave."
13. I still have no idea what Robin's primary "Love Language" is.  So I just try to cover all the bases.
14. I know what my love language is (See points 1, 3, 5, 6 and 8).  This is not to say that quality time is not a close second.
15. In marriage we don't cease to see another person's flaws.  Rather, marriage allows us to focus on what is best and beautiful in another person, which is, the image of God.   This is, again, a foretaste of how God sees us in Jesus, and how we will one day see everyone in heaven.

After 13 years it's now difficult for me to imagine life without Robin. Somehow it even seems like she has seeped into my childhood memories.  Not in some stupid "magical" way, like she was always there.  But that now, as I look back even on my own life, I look back through the eyes of my marriage.  This is what it means to become as one flesh.  Everything, past and future, is filtered through the present.  And I a presently one with Robin.

She is flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bones.
She is my woman.
I am her man.
And as I said to her 13 years ago,

"I George, will take you Robin, to be my wife.  And I promise, before God and His people, to be your faithful husband, to have and to hold, for richer and poorer, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, for as long as we both shall live.  I will love you and give my life for you, just as Christ loved the church and give up his life for her.  This is my solemn vow."