The Leen

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On Friday, Brett and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary.

In many ways, it feels like we’ve been married a lot longer than six years. I mean, we’ve been through a LOT in our six years of marriage, and we were so young when we got married. I didn’t feel young then, but I see it now, looking at the pictures. Plus, we’ve been together pretty much our entire adult lives, since we started dating when we were 18. I get it now, when people say that you change so much in your early 20’s. It’s true. We’ve changed a lot from the time we got married until now, and it wasn’t easy. But at the end of the day, I love Brett so much and am so glad that we are married to each other.

That said, even after being a couple for 10 years and married for six, he can still surprise me, which he did in a big way a couple of weeks ago. I’ve started this blog post over and over in the past few days; I’m just not sure how to accurately convey what I want to say, but it seems to make sense to share it in conjunction with our anniversary.

Wait, wait. Let me back up a little first.

So you all know about my heart thing. (I just had my yearly checkup, by the way, and I’m totally fine. They still have no idea what happened but I’m completely fine now. Yeah, totally weird.)

Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that when it happened, I had an defibrillator implanted into my body in case it ever happens again. It’s on my left side and is pretty prominent, honestly, and it bugs me. It sticks out into my armpit when I raise my arm, and the scar is definitely visible, although it’s becoming less so as time goes on. I complain about it kind of a lot, which, I know, it’s there for a good reason so I shouldn’t. But it sticks out and it feels uncomfortable or sore sometimes under my skin, and it’s impossible to shave that armpit well or put deodorant on right. Just annoying stuff, you know?

Okay, now back to my story.

A couple of weeks ago, Brett said he wanted to go out to ride mopeds with some friends of ours. He left and I got Elanor down, and he came home about an hour and a half later, which was much earlier than I’d expected him.

He said that he had something to show me when I had a second, so after I finished cleaning up the kitchen, he had me sit down on the couch and asked me to close my eyes.

I had no idea what to expect.

I heard him go around the corner into the dining room and rustle around for a minute. He asked me if my eyes were still closed, and I could hear the excitement in his voice.

I told him they were, and he came into the living room, sat down next to me and told me to open my eyes.

And there, in the same place as the defibrillator scar is on my chest, he had gotten a tattoo of a scar.

This is where I can’t think of the words to say what I feel. It is probably the most touching and sweet thing he’s ever done. There’s so much wrapped up in it…emotions relating to my heart event, emotions related to our relationship, and…yeah. Here’s where I trail off into not being able to put it all into words.

I do realize that he did it  as much for himself as for me, as a way for him to help process it all. As my friend Marci said, he bears scars from that day, too, only his are emotional and not physical. But…wow. He got a tattoo. For me. About me. About him. About us. I just…I don’t know what else to say. It moves me deeply and reminds me just how wonderful of a man, husband, father, person he is, and I’m so happy and thankful to be his wife.