I remember wanting to be married in the third grade. I talked with my parents about it. They said it was illegal. Every year after that I kept looking for HER—my wife to be. By the old age of 26, I finally found her. Now some people think that 26 isn’t all THAT old to find your true love. We’ll, it is if you’ve been looking since the third grade.

Who, at the outset, can know if a marriage is going to work? One person can’t keep it together alone. Both have to want to do what it takes—put in the effort to make it last. But who wants it to just last when it can FLOURISH?

I knew Kathy was someone special when I married her. I saw so much of goodness in her. But even a year of courting couldn’t show me everything. We have this saying, she and I…when either of us is surprised by seeing in the other some previously unrecognized ability or strength, or if at a certain moment, married life strikes us as better than we had imagined it all those years ago, we will say: “How could I have known?” This has certainly happened a lot from MY side of the marriage…and so this song, for me, felt like a meaningfully enduring way to express that.