Day 4

My favorite picture of my best friend.
Well, my best friend is Nathan.

This is my favorite picture of him.

 

This is from our first night in Ethiopia with Meron. His first couple of hours of being a dad. I love the look on his face. And I love the way Meron is looking at him. She thought he was hilarious right from the start.  They bonded early over a deep love of all forms of toilet humor.

Nathan and I have been friends since I was 16 years old. We dated for 5 years and have been married for 9 years. I know we are short timers compared to some, but 9 years  is a pretty significant portion of my life. And if you count how long I've known him? Well, more than half of my life now.

Marriage is hard sometimes. I think it is inevitable for people who are so close and who care so much about each other to hurt each other sometimes. I have been so angry and so hurt at times. But I have never questioned whether or not I loved him. He has always made me laugh more than anyone else. He has always been the first person I want to talk to when something happens (well, I guess he is tied with my mom, but that is still pretty good). He loves our children fiercely, and though we all make mistakes as parents, he does his best.

He does the dishes because he knows I hate to do them. He knows I am an insomniac who is always up WAY too late, and so he lets me sleep as much as I can.  He drove 90 miles an hour to get me to the hospital and held me when I mourned miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. He puts one foot in front of the other all day, every day, through thousands of loads of laundry and sinks full of dishes, countless lunches packed early in the morning and telling me to go take a break when I've had enough therapeutic parenting. He does it even though it is hard and even though he sometimes longs for a hermit's existence in the wilderness, because he is that kind of man. And he loves us. And he is my best friend.