The best thing I ever did...

Fourteen years ago today, I did the smartest, wisest and most fortunate (at least for me) thing I have ever done.

I married my sweetheart.

She was a quite young and extraordinarily beautiful blonde lady who was just naive enough to think think that I was something special.

She's no longer blonde, but she is still quite young and she's even more extraordinarily beautiful. She's also still naive enough to think I'm special.

At least that what she tells me and, most times, I think she means it!

She was then, and is now, physically beautiful beyond description but it is the beauty of her soul that is so compelling and attractive to me. Stacie is not only a beautiful woman, she is a beautiful person. There are a lot of beautiful women out there - none perhaps as beautiful as she - but truly beautiful souls are even more difficult to find.

She is one of those.

Someone asked me recently, "How did an ugly so-and-so like you end up with a woman like that?" I got lucky I guess. Lucky beyond all belief, finally, in meeting her. I tell people that God must like me a little more than the average person. Really, it was a just a chance encounter, a random series of events that culminated in a life-changing experience. Call it a coincidence if you must. Call it good luck, happenstance or even the will of God.

Call it what you will, I call it the best thing that ever happened to me!

Stacie, I love you with all my heart. You are my best friend in the whole world. You have been my comforter, my counselor, my guide and my muse. You inspired me and continue to inspire me to do good and to be a better person. Meeting you, falling in love with you and marrying you changed my life. (For the better, just in case you're wondering).

I can't imagine what my life would have been without you. I won't even try. But I know this: If I had my life thus far to live all over again, I would change a lot of things. I would do many things differently and I would probably be a very different person. But if any of that would mean that we would not have met or gotten together or stayed together, then I would choose the mess that my life has been all over again just so that I could continue to be your husband.

I would choose that any day, every day, all day long for all eternity.

Which is just how long I will love you more than life itself!