Snow!

I love that snow muffles everything...it's so quiet and peaceful. I remember when I was a kid, playing in snowbanks with my brother, and getting so tired from hauling my limbs through the snow, I'd collapse in the snow, and lay there and listen...listen to the snow crunch and squeak under my body as I moved, watch the flakes falling on my lashes, inspect each flake before it melted and coated my lashes. Laying there, I'd listen to my own breathing, watch it puff out in a billowing cloud that no sooner appeared than vanished into the cold, winter air. Everything was white - the tree limbs coated, windowsills, and walkways - one of the few times everything is clean. We'd sit there in the snow, my brother and I, eating it, molding it, making snowmen... recuperating until the next snowball fight began, our shrieks traveling only to the next yard before being absorbed by the clean, white layer of peace that had decended on our neighborhood overnight.

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on, you’ll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to let yourself make the journey.

Just A Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYyAtSk_6X4
"I thank God for the priviledge and honor of loving and being loved by such a man. For in the end, love is so much more than just a dream. "

My biggest fear...

I knew you before I met you...

This all happened so fast, but details are recalled like slow motion. I never saw us coming, never expected such emotion. From the moment we touched, kissed, and considered, that what we have is more than love - it's the life we'd thought surrendered. The life we never thought we'd get - with a partner, an equal. When you asked me about Europe, I took a moment and looked into your eyes for the very first time. When they met and locked, the ice in the blue of yours melted, and the rest of the world fell away. The bolt of knowledge struck us - and changed so mcuh more than our minds about each other and our beliefs about love - it changed our worlds. They'd never again be separate. Your face changed - the expression softened as the knowledge not only of WHAT we found, but whom - our other halves. The noise of the rest of the world slowly melted from my consciousness, though we were surrounded by people, all talking, yelling, laughing. Yet all I heard was the sound of my heart as it finally began beating. I felt me soul come alive, my whole body heating. You see, I thought I'd known what love was, before looking into your eyes. But it isn't what I feel when looking to at you, it's what I see IN you - what I see reflected in your eyes. It's not how I see you that matters, but how I see myself when looking through your eyes. You make me a better version of myself - but through no intended effort. Somehow you see me as the person I want to be - the one I'm destined to become - the kind of successful businesswoman, friend, lover, wife, mother, and partner I always knew I was meant to be.
People at work have pictues of those they love - but it isn't just how you feel about those in the pictures - it's how they feel about you. Looking in your eyes, being with you has once again lit the fire deep in my soul - a burning, a yearning, for a life spent reaching dreams together. That fire burns so brightly the light shines through my eyes - those who know me best have said, "the color's back in your eyes..." The color only shows when I'm lit from within, when my cup runneth over, and the struggle finally ends in a win.
Having a fire burning in my soul for you only means so much unless I've ignited one in you, that torch we both must carry through the night until the morning light shines on us, signaling he end of the trials, tribulations, heartache, and hell we'll endure to see us through - until we can belong solely to and with each other.
I've won - not a trophy, not a game. Not a momentary thrill or temporary gain. I've won, not arrived, for what we have is not a destination. Now that I am at your side I'll travel the duration. As love like ours is not simply captured in a picture, or reflected in a ring. Our love is alive - it will grow, it's given us wings. Our love is not an object, not a bauble or a keepsake. Our love is carried with as, as it is a state. Not a state of destination, but a state of mind, a state of travel, a state of being. We have entered into a higher form of living - of living each day knowing you've found your purpose, your true life's reason. The certainty of knowing I was made to be your wife, that if asked I would readily lay down my life. I know I'm meant to be here, right here at your side. Because, you see, I saw you. I know your ice-blue eyes. Before they sent me back here, with questions I can't ask, I was told I wasn't finished I have still one more task. They didn't give me details; they don't explain their goals. They sijmply send me on my way, down a path to your bright soul.

Eric...

The thing is, I'm no longer concerned with what they think. I am in love with the man of my dreams and I get to make a life and memories of that life WITH him. I don't care what they think, because I think I'm living my dream come true. I don't need to impress them. I need to be happy. The fact that we'll spend our lives as the hottest, happiest, most content people in the room and the ones still madly in love with their spouse after decades of marriage and whatever children God chooses to bless us with... well, if that makeks them jealous, then that's just a bonus. I'm going to spend my life showing you off. I don't care who's looking. I'm showing off our love so you know I value it, value you, value US, not so THEY value it. Your opinion is the one that matters to me. Yours is the advice I'll seek for the rest of my life. Yours is the shoulder I'll cry on. You are the only man for whom I'll ever bear children, the last I'll make love with, the one I'll grow old with and travel and see the world at your side. I'll never want another man - you see, why would I wish for another when you have made ever dream come true? If I could write the book of my life, I wouldn't change a single chapter because whatever beginning I may have had, it lead me to this - to you. There may have been scary parts or sad parts, but each paragraph, each verse - got me to you. I wouldn't change a word of our lives together. But I can't wait to write the next ones with you...especially two in particular: "I do."

Remember Summer

"Her lips curved in an ironic smile. Somehow it was fitting that the most important contest of her life should find her on the outside, looking in. She had spent her years like that, watching the world at a distance. Most of the time she preferred it that way. Sometimes, though, when she heard lovers laugh softly, saw them touch each other as though they were more precious than gold…a man bending down to his woman, smiling…" - E. Lowell

Glory

"She soaked naked in a small, whirling lagoon cupped under palm trees and moonlight. Her muscles slack from the heated water, and thorough sex. She listened to the song of night birds – no simulation, but the real thing that hung on the fragrant air like tears. For now, for one night, the pressures of the job were light years away. He could do that to her – and FOR her, she realized. He could open little pockets of peace. Roarke watched her, pleased at the way the tension had melted from her face with a bit of pampering. He loved seeing her this way: unwound, limp with pleasuring her senses, too lax to remember to be guilty for indulging herself, just as he loved seeing her revved, her mind racing, her body braced for action. No, it had never been like this for him before, with anyone. Of all the women he’d known, she was the only one he was compelled to be with, driven to touch. Beyond the physical, the basic and apparently insatiable lust she inspired in him was a constant fascination. Her mind. Her heart. Her secrets. Her scars. He had told her once, they were two lost souls. He thought now he has spoken no more than the truth. But with each other, they’d found something that rooted them. For a man who’d been wary of cops all of his life, it was staggering to know that his happiness now depended on one." JD Robb