Our home is changing colors. As I write, I can see my husband and brother-in-law through the window, trekking back and forth in the mud, hanging hardi-plank siding on our house. It looks so nice, so proper and finished. But I can tell already, I’m going to miss the pink (“passion pink”, as Uncle Bill aptly described the color).

So much has happened since Merritt and I stood here a year ago, looking at the little area he had staked out to build our house. This year has been much different than the dreams that filled my mind in those moments after he knelt down and asked me to be his wife. It wasn’t what I would have planned. But looking back, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’ve been going through pictures today. So many memories. I’m not the same girl that said yes to Merritt a year ago. We’re not the same couple who walked down the aisle almost nine months ago. Nor am I the same young wife who would not be moved from her husband’s hospital room last July. It has been a year of much growing and changing, yet such happiness, as well.

To my husband, getting siding on our home finally makes it look professional, finished. Yet to me, the pink-wrap seemed to represent our young-married innocence, our lack of need for material things, our utter happiness. I guess the new siding can show we’re learning, growing, becoming responsible home owners. Just as the little maple tree we planted when we first moved in showed we planned to stay a while to see it grow tall and strong.

It looks like our red maple will survive the winter cold and the young buck’s antlers. And as soon as the ground thaws, we have our little Christmas tree to plant as well. Someday, we will tell our children about way back when we first got married, moved into our little pink house, and planted our first two trees. I’m sure one of our little girls will wish the house was still pink. The boys will probably be more interested in how quickly the trees grew. But what I will want our children to grow up remembering is how much their parents love each other.

Our house may not be pink anymore, but the honeymoon is not over. And Lord willing, with lots of prayer, hard work, and two cheerful, loving hearts, it never will be. My prayer is that Merritt and I will always feel as young at heart and ever more in love than we do this Valentine’s Day.

I’ve always thought one’s perspective on marriage has much to do with one’s happiness therein. That is why I tell everyone what a wonderful husband I have. That is why I thank God every day for the blessing of my husband’s love and friendship. And that is why, even when we paint our home a soft gray green, I will always think of it as our little pink house.

On our honeymoon at Grand Teton National Park

We were asked to share something at church on Sunday in celebration of Valentine’s Day. Merritt chose a quotation from C.S. Lewis on a topic we’ve discussed much together of late—love and loss. He told me to find something uplifting to close with, so I read a young couple’s prayer by Ruth Belle Graham. Happy Valentine’s Day!

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no-one… Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell.