This picture from our 2017 trip to Disney World isn't funny like the still shots taken from roller coaster rides. It's not sentimental like the group shots with my childhood best friend and our families all together. It's not cute like the one of my 10-year-old with his mouse ears.
But if I had to pick one picture that tells the story of our trip — and our life — it would be that one.
For five 10-hour days, my husband pushed our two boys all over Disney World. Two boys who look like they shouldn't need a stroller but do because Epidermolysis Bullosa, a terrible disease they inherited from me that no one had really heard of until it was on the front page of the Washington Post. Two boys who wouldn't have been able to experience any of this magic without him.
So he pushed them. All 110 pounds of them. Sometimes he pushed them with one hand and held me up with the other. And sometimes he pushed me.
He advocated, he cajoled, he anticipated. He got us places in line. He got our food. He got me buckets of ice every night to stave off total incapacity. He held my hand while I cried. He held theirs while they cried. He did everything.
It was the most humbling experience of my life.
Not just to be pushed in a stroller like a child. But to be physically unable to do anything for my children. That's my job after all. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't even take care of myself.
But he could. And he did. And he did it happily.
He fell in love with me despite the fact that I couldn't play tennis with him or even walk a dog around the block. He married me knowing that there was a 50-50 chance our children would inherit this faulty gene.
They both did. There will be no sitting in the stands watching his sons play a sport. There will be no vacations hiking the mountains or even wandering the streets of Paris for hours. There are handicapped placards for the car and detailed instructions every time they go to a friend's house. There are surgical scissors and bandages and sobs of pain.
There is a double stroller with 2 big boys who wouldn't be able to do half the things they do without the guy in the polo shirt pushing them. Carrying them to the bathroom when they cannot walk. Holding them when they weep from the pain that he can't understand.
And that's what love is. It's not flowers or presents or date nights.
It is caring about someone else more than you care about yourself.
That's heroism my friends. Because that kind of love is how we change the world.
When someone loves you, you feel it in your bones, in your soul.
You feel it in your dreams and your waking hours.
You feel it in every song you hear and every book you read.
You feel it in every word they utter and every single thing they do.
Love is an action.
Love is a choice.
And this guy does it hard.
#lovehard
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