A Thousand Years and Love Endures
“And all along I believed I would find you.
Time has brought your heart to me.
I have loved you for a thousand years,
I’ll love you for a thousand more.“
Nearly ten years ago, I was walking on the treadmill in the room where many of my creative ideas have formed and come to life. Where thoughts and words flow and come together to form reflections of my heart often inspired by music. The song A Thousand Years by Christina Perri came on my playlist, and those lyrics above stopped me.
I hopped off the treadmill, grabbed my journal, and poured onto the pages words put on my heart, as tears streamed down my face. I believed at the time they were the crux of the message, theme, or story that would someday land in the pages of a book that I know God has long been writing in me.
I’ll save those words for a chapter in my book. But as I finished writing, I thought of Jon, our marriage, and the life we had built. I realized how blessed we were to have found love in one another, given the circumstances. It was all God.
Our love ran deep, but it was never simple. We built our marriage on friendship and faith, and we fought hard when forces tried to tear us down. And trust me when I tell you there were forces.
We fought for our marriage, for our family, for our faith. We built it with prayer, humility, forgiveness, hard work, courage, faith, and perseverance. It was real, and it was ours.
We fought for our marriage, for our family, for our faith.
heather Lebano
I sometimes smile (or smirk) when I hear people offer neat “recipes” for marriage, as if there’s one formula to follow. Or when advice comes from those who have barely lived the years it takes to weather storms together. The truth is, marriage is less a recipe and more a daily surrender—a choice to invite God’s will into the vows you make, and to keep choosing one another in His grace. Jon and I did that for 33 years—25 of them married—and though imperfect, it was holy.
Then our marriage was tested and made new in ways words can’t fully capture, through his journey of living with and dying from brain cancer. It was the weathering of storms and the refining fire in the crucible of caregiving and terminal illness. Loving Jon in those years required vulnerability, courage, a willingness to risk pain and a dying to self to give him hope.
And even though I walked my husband home to heaven — I hope and pray — I know there were still places I fell short, spaces where I could have done more. I wasn’t perfect, and neither was he. But together, with humility and forgiveness, we kept showing up for one another, especially in those hardest last few years. That’s the quiet work of love that endures.
I once told Jon about the song and its impact on me, during a season when we were struggling under the weight of several things, including our daughter’s hearing loss—a journey that tested our resolve over and over again. I wanted him to know that no matter what, I felt incredibly blessed to have him walking alongside me, not just on the good days, but also during the challenging ones.
We had already faced our share of hardships, though we could not have known the mountains still ahead. Looking back, maybe the image of me walking inclines on that treadmill that day was preparation for the steeper climbs to come. Verso l’alto
The declining hearing, two cochlear implant surgeries, a broken jaw, my own repeated ankle injuries and hidden health struggles, the care of my aging parents, the death of my dad after a three-month health struggle, my mom’s sudden move to a nursing home, the long months of separation during a pandemic, her decline and death, and then the hardest of all—Jon’s diagnosis, his stroke, and finally his death at just 54 years young.
I list them all not for drama, but to show the depth of our suffering in a short amount of time.
At times, I felt like I had lived a thousand years in only a handful. And yet, time flew by.
When I hear that song now, it carries a deeper meaning. It even brings me to tears.
It reminds me of how long I waited to meet the one who would walk with me through the lowest valleys of tears and help guide me up the steepest mountains.
Jon and I built a beautiful life together. We grew up together. We even re-parented one another through some of our deepest wounds. We raised and parented four extraordinary, faithful children together.
When I hear those words now—”and all along I believed I would find you, time has brought your heart to me…” I know they aren’t only about the love Jon and I shared in our marriage. They speak to something deeper: love that endures, even through loss.
It’s hard to believe I have to live through the loss of him. Without the one person who would help me through the loss of him. That’s the widow’s walk—learning to take each step forward, carrying both love and absence.
It’s hard to believe I have to live through the loss of him without the one person who would help me through the loss of him. That’s the widow’s walk—carrying both love and absence.
Heather Lebano
It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two years since I last saw, hugged him, heard his voice, and felt his breath. It feels like it’s been a thousand years, and yet it feels like just yesterday.
And through it all, God was at work—not only shaping us, but giving me words to share with others, to remind them that even in the darkest places, there is still something to hold onto.
On that day a decade ago, when I was walking on the treadmill, I was discerning and praying about what my writing life would look like. Never did I think this would be the story God would call me to write and share. I am merely a pen (or maybe a pencil, I make a lot of mistakes) in the hand of God.
But I believe that God has put it on my heart to share the raw truth about loss and grief while offering messages of hope while also sharing that we can live with joy, too.
We can walk through complicated things and experience the grief and process the pain and hurt, the abandonment, the unforgiveness, the wounds, the should-never-have-beens, but we can cling to faith, hope, and love.
Jon and I built our lives on faith, hope, and love—and plenty of mistakes, all covered by countless measures (thousands) of God’s mercy and grace. Though I’ve never shared it before, this is why the foundation of our headstone bears the words faith, hope, and love.
Just a few nights ago, I spent time with a family I had only just met—a husband, wife, and their teenager. We laughed, we listened, we swapped stories.
At one point, I mentioned—simply to give context to a story—that my husband had passed away. The air shifted, as it always does. Their faces changed. In disbelief and sadness, the wife opened her arms and offered a hug and kind words.
And as she held me close, she whispered words I keep playing over in my mind: “Gosh, and you are so full of so much joy.” We talked about sorrow and joy for a moment, too.
Maybe it was affirmation for me given earlier that day, I had written a short Instagram reflection about a smile, how long it takes to heal and that we can live with both sorrow and joy. That’s part of growing around grief.
It struck me, that she didn’t need to know “my story” to gauge where my heart was at that particular moment, or to wonder if today was a “fragile” day or “worthy of pity” or not. She just saw joy. She saw me for me, not for all the ways that I can be judged by and for my story and season in life in loss.
Her words made me realize, too: the joy she saw was not despite the sorrow, but because of the love that endures. Joy is what it looks like to carry Jon’s heart with me, even when I would rather have him standing next to me in that moment or any moment.
To have lived what feels like a thousand years in such a short time and still find hope rising.
Maybe that’s what the lyrics were always pointing toward: a love that doesn’t end.
A love that stretches beyond time, beyond grief, beyond death itself.
A love that still brings joy, even when grief lingers.
It brings me back to a Scripture reading from our wedding Mass:
“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13:7-8)
Maybe that is why that verse is so meaningful and profound as we live out our marriage vows—in all things, in sickness and in health, all the days of our life, and as we walk one another home to eternity, to our thousand years and more.
I have loved you for a thousand years.
I’ll love you for a thousand more.
And fittingly, this reflection will sit as my 1000th post on Instagram.
A thousand posts, a thousand memories.
A thousand reminders that love and joy remain. And by grace and if it’s God’s Will, I’ll keep writing—one more, and one more after that.
“Nothing is more beautiful than love. Indeed, faith and hope will end when we die, whereas love, that is, charity, will last for eternity; if anything, I think it will be even more alive in the next life!
St. Pier Giorgio Frassati
May we cling to faith, hope, and love.
May we remember that love never ends.
May we treasure the love we’ve been given.
May we honor the time we’re entrusted with.
May we trust that joy still rises, even when grief lingers.
And may we find a love that endures for a lifetime—or a thousand years, or more.
