On our anniversary, I used to wear things that I wore on our wedding day. ‘Mrs.’ shirts, shoes, jewelry and perfume, all to remind us of that once in a lifetime day. Eight years afterwards, the shirts and shoes no longer fit. The jewelry is far too delicate for mom life, and right now the gentle gardenia scent once treasured makes me sick {thanks, baby}.

Instead we wear our love like a badge.

We snuck out to an afternoon matinee movie on our anniversary because resting my head on a plush seat in a dark theater was about all the excitement I could handle that day. When later I was too sick – with baby, with a tummy bug, and with a sinus infection – to go out on our planned, reservation made, dress-up anniversary dinner, my husband went out to get me soup and bread. We ate our simple dinner amidst kids and toys and dog hair on the carpet, and we smiled.

Our love still fits, when all the trappings of the wedding no longer do.

There is no such thing as a boring love story, says my friend Lisa-Jo, and she’s right. There’s only the extraordinary kind of love, the selfless kind, the put you before me kind, and nothing about that is boring. The kind that scraps prime rib for takeout soup without a second thought. The kind that offers gifts from the deepest part of the heart, not a last-minute trinket just to fill an obligatory gift bag. The kind that, without a grumble, works a full day then comes home to do the whole dinner-bath-bed routine because mama is too sick growing a baby to lift her head for one more minute. It’s the kind that ends night after night on the couch with armfulls of kids so mama gets an extra minute of sleep in the bed.

Any other kind isn’t love, not the kind that comes from Him first. Because as we strive to love like that, we put our own name in in place of the word love, and we make it our own. “(Your name) is patient, (your name) is kind. (Your name) does not envy, (your name) does not boast, (your name) is not proud.” Some of these are more difficult for us than others – for me, it’s the keeping track of wrongs. For some, it’s the patience that proves to be hard. We all have our struggles, but love like this is worth fighting for.

Because it’s that kind of love that gets us to celebrating 65 years of good, well-lived together life. That kind of love that gets us through the soul-deep crises. That kind of love that eases the pain of loss. That kind of love that our kids get to see, that builds our legacy through their lives. These are our real everyday stories of love and it’s never for a moment been boring to live in the vows we made.