Happy Anniversary Mr. Walsh

I suppose I’m writing this from a rather tender place since my husband is in the middle of a very ambition filming schedule and his never-ending workload has now added overnight shoots. I’m missing him even more than usual.

Tomorrow we will celebrate our 6th anniversary. 7 years of “us”. And more than 13 years of friendship.

It occurred to me a few months ago, and I laughed as soon as I had the thought, and promised myself I’d never breathe word of this to anyone because who wants to be “that wife”… But I have literally never ever gotten my fill of Mr. Walsh.

To know him is to love him, but as his coworkers like to remind me, and they’ve been with him since the tender and cocky age of 19, he is a WHOLE LOT OF SOMETHING. I’ve had so many people come up to me over the years and let me know how they felt about him in the early years of his career. usually something along the lines of “Josh is a great guy, I wasn’t so sure about him but he’s grown on me” or “I had to sleep for a week after we finished our project, I don’t know how he has this much energy!” My personal favorite was our literary agent who patted me on the arm and said “Hey, thanks for marrying him!” A line that both delights and confuses me to this day.

He is high energy, loves his work like no one I’ve ever seen, is fast moving and an even quicker thinking man. He’s the one that I and many others call or look too in a bad situation. Day or night, his snap judgment is almost always accurate. A man once had a seizure in the airplane seat in front of him, Josh ran straight in and held him down for 45 minutes, keeping him safe while the captain made an emergency landing (we later found out there were two doctors on the flight who never bothered to pipe up.) That is the man I married.

There have been many times in my life where I have needed my space and alone time and I’ve been truly exhausted by people, but never with him. I’ve spent the last 6 years (longer actually) waiting for the other shoe to drop and for me to want and crave some space or at the very least, be annoyed with him. But the day hasn’t come.

And I hope it never does.

I’m not sure when I turned into a level-ten clinger but I really do feel that as much time as we get together, it’s not enough for me. There is always Hugo crawling into our bed, work calling/texting/emailing, our combined world’s largest immediate family, life, responsibilities, etc. I love our shared rhythms throughout the day, our morning coffee, the way he calls to check in on me several times a day, our tv show that we only watch together, weekends walks and holding hands in church, our twice-a-year unplugged getaways when there is a rare Vacation Josh sighting.

I love our garbage time, late night drives home from events where we’re dressed up and exhausted and always starving (and nothing is open except for McDonalds and their broken ice cream machine), sharing AirPods on the airplane so that we can watch the same thing. Moving our coffee cup or laptop or both into another room so that we can chat while we work, choosing to ride along with the other for an errand just to be together.

It has all meant so much to me and I’m grateful. But darn, do I miss him when we’re apart.

I’m amazed at how good and easy these first 6 years have been. And don’t think I’m bragging here, we’ve lived through some hard and ugly days. But, BUT, I can tell you life is so much better when you marry someone who you want to spend every day with. Marry that person.

Josh, I love you and I’m very thankful to be celebrating this with you. Thanks for marrying me (ha!) and for making my life so full of good things. You are the best and I’m very much looking forward to this weekend. Here’s to being intentional and to garbage time. Happy Anniversary! Love, Abbe

P.s. Just because I can’t not share. Here’s a link to our wedding photos, Josh & Abbe Walsh.

P.p.s. My post last year about my Favorite Details from Our Wedding Day.