Six years ago this morning, I awoke in a hotel room in Galway, Ireland, to the ambient sounds of talking and laughing and guitar music drifting through the open window of my room from the grassy square below, soft sounds that had carried through the night, providing a sense of kinship and rootedness in an otherwise unfamiliar place.

I ventured down to the hotel lobby a short time later, several pages of ivory stationery in tow, and sat for about an hour at a small table with a cup of tea, writing a wedding letter to the noble man who had asked me to marry him, the man of deep waters with the most honorable heart I'd ever known, the man with whom I had traveled to this ancient land to marry.

Later that morning, I sat with that man, my Kirk, as he read the letter I'd written and then presented him with my wedding gift, wrapped in a small square of red and yellow plaid cloth: his wedding band, thin and silver, handcrafted in Ireland, with the intricate design of the national Ardagh chalice lacing its circumference.

That morning, our travels to the open-air ruins of the 8th-century monastery where we would say our vows included a bus ride, a ferry ride, a taxi van ride, and a journey by pony-and-trap around the edges of Inis Mor, culminating in a longish hike up a grassy hill in our wedding clothes. At the crest of the hill, Dara, our wedding priest, greeted us with a batch of wildflowers: my handpicked bouquet. 

It was the holiest day of my life, the air so thick with heaven as we joined our lives in the thin place of that holy site. I have never looked back.

Happy anniversary, my love. My heart was always meant to be knit together with yours.