Despite everything I've achieved in my life, the culinary awards, the military commendations, the honorary degrees, I have never, ever lost sight of what's truly important. The thing that gives meaning to these triumphs. Someone to share them with. A companion. A help mate. A wife.

The purpose of relationships is not happiness, but transformation.

One person can have a profound effect on another. And two people... well, two people can work miracles. They can change a whole town. They can change the world.

You are the earth. We are sky and earth united.... You are my husband. You are my wife. My feet shall run because of you. My feet shall dance because of you. My heart shall beat because of you. My eyes see because of you. My mind thinks because of you and I shall love because of you.

Life's dirty. Life's unclean you know. It's birth, it's sex, it's the intestinal tract. One big squishy, unsanitary mess. It never gets any cleaner either. You know, dust to dust, worms crawl in, worms crawl out, right Even though we know that, we still walk the walk, we still live the life. We're like a bunch of little kids. Little kids, you know, we jump in this big old pond of mud and we're slapping it all over our face, rubbing our hair all down our backs and we're making these glorious, gooey, mud pies. That's us.

Marriage. It's a hard term to define. Especially for me--I've ducked it like root canal. Still there's no denying the fact that marriage ranks right up there with birth and death as one of the three biggies in the human safari. It's the only one though that we'll celebrate with a conscious awareness. Very few of you remember your arrival and even fewer of you will attend your own funeral.

Real meaningful endeavours, the biggies in human existence, often require the sacrifice of others.