anniversary!

Today is our 3rd wedding anniversary. It's pretty cool to think that we've been married 3 years. Actually, it seems a lot longer. If I try to think about it, it's really a struggle to try to remember what life was like before we were together. I think we were different people then. Smaller, less complete. Actually, bigger, but that's another story. Anyway, we weren't whole. Everything from before is part of who we are, but only a small part. So much of who we are is who we've become together, as one.

A long, long time ago, before we were even officially dating, I bet Sharayah $5 that she could make me happy forever. We agreed that this would be difficult to verify, or at least by the time one of us won it would be difficult to pay them, since it would be forever, and $5 wouldn't exist anymore. So, we picked a time that would be a cutoff, something far, far in the distant future. You're thinking, because of the timing of this blog post, that we picked our 3rd anniversary. Well no, we weren't even dating. Don't be silly. But we did choose Sharayah's 25th birthday, which is now less than a month away. It was such a very long time ago, and now I'm so close to winning. She's made me far happier than I ever imagined when we made that silly bet. Now it's just a few weeks away. That $5 is as good as mine.

That wasn't our first bet, or our last (though it's our only currently ongoing bet). The first recorded Jason and Sharayah bet dates back even further into the history of the before-we-were-together time (which is when we were great friends, but for some reason hadn't yet realized that we were made for each other). There was a place along Riverside in Tulsa where you could walk down a boat ramp right up to the water. Sometimes we'd go down there to skip rocks, probably after a Wal-Mart run or something. One time Sharayah found an enormous rock for me to skip. It wouldn't really fit in one hand, so I didn't think it would skip, but I thought I might as well try. She bet me I couldn't do it. If I skipped the rock, she'd have to marry me in approximately 2.5 years (it ended up being under 2 years), but if I couldn't do it, she wouldn't have to marry me ever. Well, I didn't see the harm in that. After all, if I won, I wasn't bound by the bet, she was. If I lost, she wasn't forbidden from marrying me, she just wouldn't have to. So, with nothing to lose, I took that giant, un-skip-able rock, spun part way around, and flung it as hard as I could, as parallel to the water as I could get it. That goliath rock skipped not once, but three times. It was pretty awesome. I won, and she had to marry me.

That was a few months before the other bet, which was another several months before we started dating. I want to paint an honest picture, I don't win all the bets. Currently we're tied 4-4, so on Sharayah's birthday, I'll not only get $5, I'll get my 5th victory, and I'll gain the lead. And I'll still be happily married to my best friend, who continues to make me happier than I'll ever deserve to be.

It's been an amazing 3 years. I love you, Sharayah.

I was born to tell you I love you