Today, my husband and I celebrate 15 years of wedded bliss. 15 years, wow!

I can still remember how I felt back then, 15th May 1999; how nervous I was on our wedding day, but how certain I was too.

We always mark our anniversaries. We think it’s our special day to remind ourselves where our love started and to celebrate all we’ve been through together – good and bad.

We give each other cards and sometimes gifts if it’s a special number. We write loving messages in our cards to say those things we don’t always find time to say (which now get a snigger from our children!). We’ve certainly had our challenges over the years, but even when we’ve been pushed to near breaking point we have kept tight the invisible thread that holds us together.

I was usually the one to write a lot in my card about how my love has grown and how proud I am of our family, but since Abi died, I’ve found that harder to do. The pen falters as I try to find the words of love that won’t include the sorrow of losing our Abi, pain which is so, so deep for both of us…

We had Abi the year after we were married, we were keen to start our family. All our children are loved very much, but to me, Abi – our first born – symbolises our early love, our excitement at wanting to start a family, and the blessed creation of a precious new life that would be part of both of us and strengthen our desire for other children.

So now, I simply write ‘I love you, always and forever’. Yet, the few words mean just as much as the many, and we both know that.

In 15 years we’ve had four beautiful children and established a happy home. If my life ended right now, I’d be very content that we’d had a wonderful marriage, even with our losses. I believe that this is the key to it all… living together, loving together, crying together, being together.

I know it’s a cliché, but I do believe ours was truly a match made in heaven.

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’  and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ ?  So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Matthew 19: 4-6