There is a string of thirty seven cards above my living room window. They tell the story of our marriage, in the paper messages we sent out each Christmas. 

There is the one we silk screened together in my third grade classroom while we were engaged. Next was the block print of Mary round with child, which subtly announced the coming of our own firstborn son. The year that things came apart in New Mexico, and John resigned, I chose a quote to reflect our grief. 

"Comfort ye my people."

The year our fifth child was born I felt too exhausted to make a card and lowered my standards enough to send bought ones. It felt artificial and I never did that again, even though my tolerance for exhaustion increased. 

The year Ben hovered between life and death I created a black card with s single gold star peeking through. The year my mother died we crafted a sixteen page booklet including a monologue of what she mouthed as she slid from one world to another. It included the exclamation "WOW!", the question "What are we celebrating?" and "chocolate cake". 

The card we sent when our son's marriage dissolved reflected my own sense of loss. I wrote it on a foggy mountain top. Life was more buoyant the year I sewed little Christmas trees with Charlie Brown fabric on the back.

Three words that pepper today and tomorrow are a wish for the next year to be happy. Yet when I peruse the History of John and Lori, happiness is not what takes center stage. My heart is drawn to the years we survived poverty, and loss. I am moved to look back at Before and see how it evolved to things I could never, ever have predicted. Like twins. And Autism. Divorce, and cancer. 

Yet the decidedly unhappy times are part of who we are. They became the humus for miracles, like our son's precious wife, a pair of sparkling teenagers, and our immersion in the special needs community.

Uninterrupted bliss would not have forged us as a couple, and I don't pretend that we have used up our quota of pain.