Let Me Love You

I met my husband in August 2003.  I was living in a small studio in Washington, DC and I had just started my first year of law school.   It was my first time living outside of New York.  I knew no one and my closest family member was hundreds of miles away.  I was heartbroken from a recent break up with my college boyfriend but I was meeting new friends and feeling my independence in a way every woman should.  My husband was also a first year law student by way of North Carolina.  We had made eye contact a few times, possibly shared an elevator in the library and finally spoke at a birthday party for another blogger in September of that year.  At the party, we flirted, joked and parted ways.  He asked a mutual friend for my phone number and called and asked me on our first date.

We became close friends (and a bit more) and I quickly found myself telling him everything and he did the same.  We didn't act or play games.  We were who we were.  We wore our sweat pants and flip flops, danced around my apartment, sang off key, drank too much with our classmates... I was honest with him about my recent heartbreak and how hard I thought it would be for me to trust and he was patient.  He listened.  There was this song in heavy rotation on R&B stations at the time called Let Me Love You by Mario.  One afternoon during the spring of 2004, we were studying in my apartment and it played.  I was idly humming along, busing myself with casebooks and briefs and Richard began to look at me intently.  He told me that he really felt the song... that the song was about me... about us (he was good, right? haha).  I listened to the lyrics and I was a little overwhelmed.    The song was simple but the message was clear.  Our relationship evolved pretty quickly thereafter... with many, many more songs.  We fell in love, were engaged the next summer and married the following winter. 

We had a tough weekend.  Richard injured himself in a corporate basketball game Friday and we spent most of the night in the ER.  This weekend, I busied myself giving him lots of TLC and forcing him to rest while tending to the boys.  It was hard for him to be out of commission because we are a team.  We bickered... I was meddling, nagging, treating him like a child... he was being stubborn, selfish, and a total guy.  On Sunday morning, I had VH1 playing in the living room while everyone ate breakfast in kitchen.  The weekend had just started to crash down on me and I was close to passing out in my cheerios when Let Me Love You played.  Wesley started swaying in his high chair and Isaiah got up to dance around the kitchen.  Richard and I looked at each other and smiled, remembering...