Weddings

Huge pack of guys running today. All guys this morning. It is much different than all girls during the week. The banter is about deer hunting and sports as opposed to Bath and Body Works, relationships, and hair.

I had to keep it at one lap this morning as I did a few weddings today. I tried to push the pace a few times, but no takers. I thought Stiffler would have been game after his sabbatical from running this week -- but I couldn't get the kid to go.

The first wedding was at the Soaring Wings Vineyard. Quite a nice place to have a wedding. Natasha and Warren had a great morning and are now on their way to the Dominican Republic. AJ did the music. It was great to be part of it. They were so happy!

The second wedding was huge. Jessi and Matt did an awesome job planning their wedding. Check their slide show out. This is incredible.

Here is what I told both couples:

As of today, you are no longer two, but one. You come into your marriage relationship as individuals and you will not lose your identity, rather you will use your individuality to create and strengthen your marriage relationship.

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 and especially 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, the only thing you really get is 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.

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.

Congratulations to Warren and Natasha and to Matt and Jessi!