Sweet September: I Still Choose You

September has always belonged to love for me.

There is something about this month that feels familiar before it even arrives. The slight shift in the air as summer begins to loosen its grip. The first thought of knitted sweaters and evenings that arrive a little earlier. The quiet knowing that another season is preparing to turn, and every year, somewhere inside all of that, I remember us.

I remember being young in early autumn and falling in love. Not the kind of young where I knew exactly what I was doing. The kind of young where I thought I understood love because I could feel it…and goodness, I felt it.

I knew butterflies, I knew missing you, I knew wanting to be near you, I knew imagining forever.

What I didn’t know yet was everything forever would ask of us. I didn’t know that love would eventually have to become more than a feeling. That it would have to learn how to live alongside bills and babies, responsibilities and exhaustion, celebrations and disappointments, grief and change.

I didn’t know there would be versions of us that hadn’t even been born yet, and yet, here we are.

Twenty-four years of marriage.

Even writing that makes me stop for a moment.

Twenty-four years isn’t simply a number. It’s a collection of lives lived beside one another. The hopeful versions of us, the exhausted ones, the parents, the grieving ones, the ones who were certain and the ones who had no clue what came next…and most of all, the versions of us that were tested.

We’ve dreamed together, grown together, and probably gotten on each other’s last nerve more times than either of us could count.

We’ve changed, and I wouldn’t want either of us to still be exactly who we were all those years ago. Perhaps that has been one of the greatest lessons marriage has given me:

You don’t only learn how to love a person. You learn how to keep meeting them.

You meet the person they become after life changes them, and they have to meet you there, too.

That realization makes a poem from my book, Tru Intimate Thoughts, feel especially tender to me now.

I called it Sweet September.

When I wrote it, I wrote:

Sweet September,
I remember the day
I fell in love with you…
barely knowing
what love truly was.

That line hits differently now.

Barely knowing what love truly was.

Because I didn’t…not really.

I knew the beginning of love, but time would teach me the rest.

Love would become staying in the room long enough to understand each other. Forgiveness. Knowing when to speak and, sometimes, knowing when to hush.

It would become friendship, touch, laughter, and patience. Giving one another room to grow without assuming growth meant growing apart. Sitting beside each other when there were no words capable of fixing what hurt. Celebrating the good when it came, and somewhere along the way, it became making plans again, dreaming again, finding reasons to flirt again, and realizing there was still more of each other to discover.

That doesn’t mean every season has been hard. Lord knows, some were more trying than others, and some changed us permanently. Some required more from our marriage than I ever imagined we’d have to give…but I’m glad they did.

There were moments when love didn’t look romantic at all. It looked like showing up…carrying what the other couldn’t that day, making room for grief, raising a family, and figuring things out with whatever we had.

It looked like choosing us without losing me.

And that last part has become especially important to me as I’ve gotten wiser.

Because I don’t believe lasting love should require a woman to disappear.

I want to be fully myself inside the life we’ve created, still discovering pieces of myself I haven’t met yet, and I want the same freedom for you.

Love isn’t holding someone so tightly that they cannot change. It’s being curious enough to meet them when they do.

There is a part of Sweet September where I wrote:

Each September,
we pause,
we breathe,
we renew,
not just vows,
but the quiet understanding
that love is a choice,
and I still choose you.

There it is.

The line that means more to me now than it ever could have when I was younger.

I still choose you.

Not because we haven’t lived enough life to know better, because we have, and not because every day has been easy. It hasn’t.

I choose you with history. I choose you with knowledge. I choose you knowing your quirks and your habits, the things that make me laugh, and the things that make me look at you like, Sir…

I choose you after seeing what life can do, while knowing there is still so much life ahead of us.

And I choose you because I Know Me.

I’ve made the choice to honor my beliefs, morals, boundaries, and the life I want to live, and you are the one who has met me in all the areas and aspects of who I Am.

That’s different from young love.

There’s something incredibly intimate about being known across decades…by someone who remembers versions of you that no longer exist. Someone who knew your face before a certain wisdom appeared, who remembers what you worried about at twenty-something and gets to hear what you’re dreaming about now.

There is romance in that.

And now another September has found us…Still living. Still dreaming. Still building. Still learning.

And yes, still falling in love.

Sweet September…

We have arrived.

I don’t love you today simply because I made a promise twenty-four years ago. I love you because after everything those years have held, there are still moments when I look over and recognize the man I chose, and others when I discover someone new in you.

Maybe that’s the beauty of lasting love.

You don’t only fall once.

If two hearts remain open, you get the chance to fall again and again.

So, my Love…

Here we are.

Another September.

And I still choose you.