A couple nights ago I sent Chris a text message simply saying “You complete me”.  I wasn’t sitting around pondering something meaningful to send, it just popped in my head in the midst of cleaning, and I sent it.  It was after I hit send that I really started to consider the hugeness of the statement.  What does it mean exactly that Chris “completes” me and how can I make sure to do the same for him?  When Tom Cruise’s character said it in Jerry Macquire it was sweet and helped bring about the much anticipated (and expected) happy ending.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpWAlvWNZj0

In real life I think it takes a long time to get to the point where you can wholeheartedly say to another person “you complete me”.  When I was twenty and walked down the aisle to give Chris my hand in marriage, did this complete me – nope.  When we graduated from college together was I made complete by his presence there with me – nope.  When we had children together and began raising them did I feel that we completed one another in the midst of it all – nope.  It was time, and tragedy, and victory, and monotony that did it.  It was the gradual realization that he is seriously in this for the long haul that did it.  We are all very well intended when we give our lives to one another in marriage; but proving we will live out those vows takes time.  I believe it is only through the test of time we are able to marvel at the peace of those promises.

You complete me doesn’t just mean you know how to finish my sentences or you know what I will order in a restaurant.  It means you know what songs I want played at my funeral.  You know what scares me and what thrills me.  You know my weaknesses and make up for them by being stronger in those areas.  You are my history and my future.

Biblically, God intended this exact thing.  In the Garden of Eden he looked at man and knew he was not complete – he took a rib bone from Adam and created Eve and Adam said “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Genesis 2:23.

I don’t know if it is the number of years we have been together, or the age of our children, or the things we have recently lived through that have brought me to this point where I feel complete.  I am sure it happens at different times in each relationship.  I am sure that no one can create a set of instructions that will guarantee all couples will reach it.  All I know is I feel an incredible amount of gratitude for the exact set of circumstances that have allowed my eyes and my heart to be open enough to feel it and recognize it for what it is.

God gave Chris to me as my other half – I feel completely and utterly certain of this.

Because of him, I am complete.