Happiness, uncorked

I tend to experience emotions as colors, particularly when they are strong ones. Anger is a throbbing red, sadness a draining bluish-grey, and so on. And now, as I try to describe the intense happiness and deep joy I experienced on the day I married Daniel Joseph Abou-Jaoude, and in the days and weeks that followed, the color that comes to me is sparkling champagne. Its as if life suddenly became submerged in a flute of the stuff, transforming the ordinary into a golden, bubbling concoction of bliss. I feel light and airy and tingling, feeling myself-perhaps for the first time-to be beautiful and glowing, a shining bubble of golden contentedness. Everyone deserves to feel this way, if only once--to feel oneself loved, desired, and treasured, to look into the eyes of the person you love most and see the happiness you feel mirrored in their soul, to wander about carelessly in a happy glow that no care can penetrate.

Every moment seemed touched by Midas, until the ordinary shone with the gleam of the extraordinary and I felt that truly anything could happen. Because my miracle did happen; I did meet and fall in love with the most incredible person, and what’s more he fell in love with me. My happiness stemmed from this realization, one that I will forever cherish and never take for granted-that in the midst of sorrow and loneliness, isolation and despair, God placed Dany in my life. From that encounter, how much has changed and how quickly!

Maybe because I had to wait so long, or maybe because even though I hoped and I dreamed, I never could have imagined how beautiful love could be. Regardless, the longing and hoping and waiting made our wedding day and honeymoon all the sweeter. Like champagne, bubbling up from unseen sources, my happiness that day and in the says since continues to emanate, golden in color, transforming my life.