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| Greeting guests after the wedding ceremony. |
It is funny how God dances with us and leads us. If someone asked me ten years or five years ago, I would never imagine that I would get married in an Episcopal Church. Ten years ago, I would have been certain that I would be married in a Pentecostal or Evangelical Church. Five years ago, I would have been certain that I would be married in a Catholic Church. But there I was, taking the most important vow in my life in the most beautiful church that I have ever seen. Here is a picture that was snapped by a friend, and I can not wait to see what the wedding photographer was able to capture with her high power camera.
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| I do. I do! |
In a way, I wished I had made fewer unhelpful turns in romantic relationships earlier in my life, especially for obstacles that were rooted in human nature that I would overly-spiritualized. A good example of this is that I was shy and found it hard to connect with women that I was attracted to. But instead of realizing that I should grow psychologically and figure out why I had a hard time getting to know other women, I would just say to myself that God does not want me to meet women. This is a pretty messed up way to live life. And this is a pretty messed up way to be in relationship with people and with God. It is pinning things on God that God never had an opinion on. Unfortunately, I see this over-spiritualization so often in other areas of my life and in the lives of well meaning Christians.
There are a hundred decisions that need to be made in preparation for a wedding, which can feel like a thousand decisions on the days prior to the wedding. Given my love of dancing, I gave a lot of thought about which song I will play for the first dance and which song I will play for the last dance. At first, I wanted to sandwich the dancing with Jack Johnson songs, with "Better Together" as the first dance and "Upside Down" from the soundtrack of Curious George as the last dance. I ended up going with other songs for those dances, but a closer listening of "Better Together" gave me a better appreciation of the song and why it makes sense to make a life long commitment to another person. Life is better together with another person.
Another way that gets at this idea is from the thoughtful and meaty sermon preached by the priest at the wedding.
"The culture tells us incessantly that the only way one can find fulfillment and the only way one can be truly happy is by being selfish. You become your true self only when you make sure that you get your own needs met. Yet in a life that is selfish one doesn’t become one’s true self. One doesn’t become happy. One simply becomes alone."
There are so many things left to say about the wedding and about marriage as an institution ordained by God, but perhaps it is wise to end this blog with these two quotes.
From the last verse in the Gospel of John, we read, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole word would not have room for the books that would be written".
And from Jack Johnson's song Better Together:
"But there is not enough time,
And there is no, no song I could sing
And there is no combination of words I could say
But I will still tell you one thing
We're better together."
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