Going to the Chapel

     Believe it or not, there was a time in my life when I honestly didn't think I would get married. Lo and behold, it happened to me at the ripe age of 30. More surprising is that here I sit at age 37, about to do it again. Yes, a date has been set for Hilary and me. On May 1st the two of us will become husband and wife.  We've chosen to do it in a courthouse, with a backyard reception of friends and family in the near future. "'Cause we've been there before, and we're never going back again, not again."  I'm not referring to a big wedding when I say this, I'm speaking of a successful marriage. Unhappiness is not an option.  This is a new life indeed.
     Some may be amazed that it's happened so quickly, but not to those the closest to us.  That day in Carolina Ale House something happened in two people's lives that couldn't be predicted, nor reproduced.  Hilary and I went from hurt people to whole people, and that's precisely where I feel we still are today. We are parents, we are individuals, and we are a team. Through the thick and the thin, I trust her with all that I have.  After all, this woman carries my baby while positively affecting my own son's life.  She is a strong woman... a rock in the wake of tempestuous noise.  Her children are my own, and mine is hers....we've built a strong family from a simple stack of wood.  I never would've thought all of this possible that day in Ale, not in a million years. But, one thing remains constant and I learned it on Day 1 with Hilary.  In this bubble, there lies two souls with potential.  Two that have been hurt and have gotten back up, two that want the same things in a relationship and also in a family, and two that haven't given up on fate nor love.  That was the magnetic attraction to her that night.  She made me feel hope, she made me feel alive.  Now I sit here, with a woman I love in the next room, and our children upstairs asleep....as I look around a house that we've just bought, in a town that we love. And it makes me wonder, where will this ride take me next?