those golden kisses all over the cheeks

Before I ever met my husband, we began talking on the Internet. He had asked me to sing on a project he was doing with Chris Conley from Saves The Day called Two Tongues, so we started emailing back and forth. I was fresh off the divorced block and seriously avoiding the opposite sex, but there was just something super intense and crazy about the connection I felt with him, so we continued to talk. One night when we were chatting—he was in California, I was in Texas—we were discussing Lord Of The Rings and started Googling the actors. We stumbled on a photo of Liv Tyler after recently delivering her child, prancing around on the beach in a state of sheer joy. We found it to be absolutely amazing and started captioning the photo and the one that stuck was, “GLORY BE!”

This was all in late January. A few weeks later, my Valentine’s Day gifts arrived in the mail from him—though we still weren’t officially dating, we were smitten and sent each other valentines. I opened up my Valentine card and was sold.

It was a piece of paper he had printed from the Internet of the shot of Liv Tyler in her bathing suit, arms raised to the sky and over her head in bold handwriting just said “GLORY BE!” On the back he had written the most amazing letter asking me to be his girlfriend. Before that year had ended, we were engaged. Our fifth Valentine’s together will be this year, our three-year wedding anniversary will be this spring and I couldn’t imagine being any happier. GLORY BE!