Today, I celebrate my tenth wedding anniversary, a decade of marriage. While other hearts are full of grief and sadness and heartbreak for a myriad of other reasons and they are wading and sorting their way with bare-nerved pain through some of the most difficult of processes, today I celebrate love and progress and growth and partnership. And I have to admit something: the brain weasels threaten and the question rises in the back of my mind like a lump in my throat, a weight in my chest that threatens to stifle and suffocate.

What right do I have to it? What right do I have to be happy, secure, and glaringly in love? What right have I to celebrate in the midst of the trials and troubles of those in my life? I know that I have written on this before, though the circumstances and point of the writing were somewhat different. Still, it is a notion that I struggle with, this right to feel happy, to be happy.

And yet I will. Not necessarily because I deserve to be happy but because I choose to be. Twelve years ago, I made the choice to say yes to the young man who asked me on a date after chivalrously driving me to the airport to fly home for my aunt’s funeral. I chose to say yes when he stood in my dorm room on a Tuesday a year later and those blue eyes of his asked me to marry him (partially because I didn’t give his voice a chance to get the words out). I made and still make a choice to say yes every time since then that he has asked me if I am sure, if I am happy, if I am still glad that I joined my life to his.

Yes. I am sure.

Yes. I am happy.

Yes. I am still glad that I am here, that I am his wife, that we are family, that we are together.

I say yes because it is the truth.Today, I will pray for those who hurt, who are in pain. Today, I will put on a slinky dress (congrats to any fellow fans who get that reference) and enjoy a beautiful dinner with wonderful people and celebrate all that is good in life, for, yes, there is much good. Amidst darkness and pain and sorrow and grief, there is good. There is grace. There is hope. And I will celebrate it all today.

Today, I will pray for those who hurt, who are in pain. Today and every day, I will do my best to care for, encourage, love on, and support them, as they have always done in pouring out themselves for me. But, today, I will also put on a slinky dress (congrats to any fellow fans who get that reference), enjoy a beautiful dinner with wonderful people, and celebrate all that is good in life, for, yes, there is much good. Amidst darkness and pain and sorrow and grief, there is good. There is grace. There is hope. There is love. There is family. There are triumphs. There is new life. And I will celebrate it all today.

Photography by Jordan Barclay. http://jordanbarclay.com