2 Weddings in 60 minutes

I did two weddings today within 60 minutes and the two weddings were about 10 minutes apart. Both weddings were great and it was a privilege for me to be a part of both of them.

At both weddings I said something like this (I figured nobody would be at both weddings, so I had no problem repeating myself. Ironically, one other person was at both weddings!):

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.

Today you take on each other’s burdens.

Today 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?

Not very much, but the one thing you get is really cool. 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.

[The above verse was mostly written by Frederick Buechner]

To Brain and Lisa and Rob and Julie -- I pray for years and years of faithfulness and fruitfulness in your respective marriages.

Training update:

20 miles at 7:30 per mile with Chris, Dave, and Dave. We started at five thirty in the morning and finished two and a half hours later at eight o'clock. We hit Elmwood Park, Memorial Park, and the Keystone Trail. Great run with some great guys.