Maybe it started when we were sitting in that bamboo house with the hundred-year-old man, feeling comically out of place among the village elders who dropped their chicken bones through the floor as they ate. We were in the strangest of situations and we both loved it—I caught your eye from across the room and you were grinning from ear to ear.Or maybe it was when we got lost in that cave and our candle burnt out. I was clinging to you, scared, but we still tried to make jokes as we stomped through the bat guano, and you somehow found the way out ­­and we were saved.Maybe it happened much later. I don’t know when it started, but by the time we were in the airport saying our goodbyes at the end of our semester in Thailand, I was accidentally saying “I love you” as I gave you a hug. My eyes widened when I heard the words escape spontaneously, without my permission. Turns out you didn’t hear them muffled into your shoulder… and I was glad.

Then that first hard summer after I had lived in the poor places and had my eyes opened, nothing seemed right anymore, not even the sheer number of napkins everyone used at the café where I worked. I would be laid low by the recognition of my part in all the injustice and pain, and thrilled by all of the new ideas and possibilities surging through my mind, and then you would call. My family started calling you the “Trudy whisperer” because you always seemed to call at the crescendo of my tearful or angsty maladjustment, and after getting off the phone with you I would be all smiles, and calm. It wasn’t that you talked me out of my ideas. If anything, you talked me further into them (we were co-conspirators from the beginning). But after talking to you I didn’t feel alone or crazy anymore. If I was an outlier, then we were outliers together.

You’ve always had that effect on me. Your peaceful presence, your gentle strength—they are the stability and trust that I’ve needed so often over the years. So many times, as I’ve voiced my confessions and my fears to you, I have met that steady, loving gaze of yours: those undaunted eyes remind me that even the worst will be made well. Your unconditional acceptance proves to me again and again that love is strong enough to ride out the worst of storms, even and especially the ones that rage within me.

After a few more months, a few adventures, ideas, and plans later, you were telling me you were falling in love—this time we both heard the words. We haven’t stopped dreaming and planning and adventuring since then, pursuing this slippery notion of the Kingdom of God to the ends of the earth and the depths of our souls.

The day after our wedding, we flew back to Asia, backpacked and hitchhiked and motorbiked through Vietnam, started work in a Chinese city we had never heard of before, befriended whomever we met. Two years later we were starting again in India, with a new language, new culture, new community. All along the way, your calming presence makes you dependable in crises, your patient ear and gentle humor defuses conflict, and your disarming smile always seems to set people at ease.  You take everyone seriously, and they notice that. You’re a born peacemaker, but I like to joke that your uncanny ability to make friends with anyone, from vegetable sellers and homeless people to grumpy old men and shy toddlers (who call you by name and refuse to let you pass without shaking your hand), is also a spiritual gift. Sometimes I grow weary of welcoming strangers into my life, but your open-handed generosity in this regard challenges me to continue opening myself to community, even when it’s hard.

Four years into marriage, here we are again in a new place, entering the unknown. We’re starting fresh with a new culture and a new community (though we do have a head start on the language this time). Our address has bounced back and forth across the Pacific, and we still don’t own a house or even a stick of furniture, but we’ve found a home in each other.

We’ve grown up a lot in these past four years, and we’ve learned more about ourselves and one another than we even knew was possible when we were vowing to journey through life together forever. We’ve found limitations and explored wounds we didn’t realize we had, and we’ve wounded each other a fair bit, too. But we’ve also discovered more beauty and humanity in one another than we could have imagined at the outset. We have challenged one another, offered healing and understanding to one another, and have carried each other when we couldn’t have carried on alone. In this most recent season—arguably the most difficult season of my life thus far—I know you have especially done that for me, and I feel more thankful than ever to have you as my co-conspirator and beloved companion on this journey.

So, happy birthday to my favorite human. Here’s to you and to our wild and beautiful life together.