My Husband

 "Would it make you happy?"

His deep brown eyes gazed up at me earnestly. My sounding board. My support.

"Um... Like... Dating him? I don't know.... Maybe?"

"Then you should look into it. See if it would work."

His love for me was overwhelming. It still is. Phil doesn't require me to be anyone other than who I am, even when things don't quite line up between us. Rather than forcing it, we make space for each other. 

Our second most meaningful song? "Save the last dance for me."

He told me in 2012 during a similar discussion "I never imagined I would have you to myself. I see you, how you love people. How you never stop moving. I maybe didn't expect to share you in this way, but I always knew I'd be sharing you."

I asked him then if he truly was OK with me being romantically engaged outside of our marriage bed. If he'd really not be jealous or hurt. "Will you leave me?" He asked, voice steady, eyes steadier. 

"Never!" I tried as best I could to infuse all of the truth inside my skin into that one word. All of the prodigious will my stubborn Dutch heart could muster. 

And he knew. We were safe.

Fast forward to 2019, in a dark tent at 3 am I woke Phil and told him that I'd just hugged my friend and co-coordinator of 9 years goodnight, and it had become something more than a hug while still being nothing more than a hug... That we'd sat down on the grass deliberately apart from each other to breathe when it was over, and stared with new eyes... That I thought maybe I loved him... 

And my incredible husband's only question was "Would it make you happy."

Two years, much soul-searching, prayer and discussion later I actually did start dating Joseph... But that's a story for another day.