[Adapted from my wedding vows to Danielle LeCourt, September 2025]
In what feels now like a former life, nearly all my thoughts were prayers. I talked with god constantly. And for a very, very long stretch, so many of those conversations were rather desperate.
What I wanted more than anything — what I had tried to build my life around and toward — was a loving and affectionate romantic relationship and a happy home.
But for all my efforts, the thing that I wanted most felt *so* far away. And the cruel irony was the harder I tried, the farther out of reach it all felt.
I didn’t understand.
Early mornings were often the most difficult, when I felt so vulnerable and earnest. I remember on one of those early mornings, working out on an elliptical at the YMCA in Mission Valley. As I thought about my difficulties— how long they had persisted, how heavy, and how stuck and impossibly far away things felt — my anxiousness reached a sort fever pitch. At some point, piercing through that spiraling internal chaos, I felt a question, which stopped all my thoughts. It was a question I then attributed to god:
Do you trust me?
My answer was immediate and instinctive: “Yes.”
Silence seemed to follow that brief colloquy. I would feel that question surface again, though, every so often in the years that followed, notably as my situation only ever seemed to get worse. Whenever I felt the question, I always gave the same answer — though sometimes it took a little longer to find that answer within me.
It has now been about 13 years since that early morning. In many ways, that version of me from back then would hardly recognize the man who stands before you now. I like to think, though, that he’d recognize in me the same earnestness. I know he’d see that this great desire of my heart has not changed.
What that younger version of me could not see then — what he could not have even contemplated during those difficult early mornings — was that one day, a little more than a decade later, I would be newly single and just (reluctantly) paid $60 for premium access to Hinge. I was trying to be brave and follow my therapist’s advice to maybe just get some practice talking to women again. But as it turns out, the first person I would match with would be this witty, gorgeously tall former volleyball player (a more accomplished athlete than I could ever hope to be). Oh, but she would also lead with her interest in black holes, and she would write the most beautiful poetry and prose — to say nothing of hosting her own podcast. I’d find soon enough that she asked the best questions, too, and listened for the answers intently. Turns out she would be one of the best interviewers I’ve ever seen, and probably the most well read person I’ve ever known. She would certainly be the most intellectually curious, while also an incredible mother to two beautiful girls.
And she would match with me by commenting first on my interest in poetry, of all things (“You had me at poetry that makes me feel something.”).
Somehow, all this would only begin to describe the depth, passion, and complexity of this beautiful woman who, before our first night of chatting was over, would call me “handsome.”
At some point less than two months later, this amazing woman would read on my face that I loved her and prompt my full confession. A little while later, she would tell me that she loved me, too. And in the months that followed, I would come to find in her love the kind of settled rest my soul had always longed for — the kind I suspect every soul may long for.
And now? Now, I live in a world where I get to love you and be loved by you. Sometimes my heart can hardly contain that happiness. It is so much more than I could ever have imagined—more than I had ever hoped for.
So as I look back now to all those years of difficulty, and I remember that guy on the elliptical, I can’t help thinking that everything that came before was a necessary predicate to the happiness I feel now. And what’s more: there’s a version of this story, Danielle, in which you are the answer that brief colloquy all those years ago.
That thought has also stopped me in my tracks more than once.
Now, What do I make of all this?
Honestly, I don’t know. It's no secret that I tend to be a bit skeptical these days, and I want to be careful about reading into things more than might actually be there.
But, to borrow from Mary Oliver, my love, I can at least say this: finding and loving you — more than anything else I’ve known and experienced the last many years — has me “consider[ing] eternity as another possibility.“
