Wedding

At 5:00 a.m. I was no longer homeless. Brad and I packed up our blankets and went to our respective houses.

I was on the trail by 6:00 a.m. Kurt and I did 13.1 miles in about an hour and forty minutes. I was home by 8:00 a.m. to watch the boys while Amber worked until 2:30 p.m. I did a wedding a 4:00 p.m. and a worship service at 6:00 p.m. Then Amber, the boys, and some friends went to Maria's for some Mexican food. When I got home I reviewed the media and my sermon for tomorrow morning. Busy day.

The wedding today was beautiful. The couple did such a good job planning it and were a joy to work with. Here is part of what I said:

Today you promise that you will love, honor, and comfort each other to the last of your days.

Today you promise that you will cherish each other and be faithful to each other always.

Today you promise that you will do these things not just when you feel like it – but for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health – even when you don’t feel like it at all.

Today you give away part of your freedom.

You take on each other’s burdens.

You bind yourselves together in ways that are even more painful to unbind emotionally than they are to unbind legally.

What is it then that you get in return?

Well, you get each other.

Assuming you have any success at all in keeping these promises, you will never have to face the world quite alone again. There will always be the other to talk to, to listen to. If you are blessed, even after the first passion passes – you’ll still have a kindness and a patience to depend on and a chance to be patient and kind.

There will be someone to get through the night with, to wake the new day beside.

You will both have lives apart as well as life together.

But a marriage made in heaven is one where a man and a woman become more richly themselves together than the chances are either of them could have managed to become alone.

I pray this for them and for the rest of us who are married.