The night before departure…
First daughter: “Mom?
Um…I don’t have any shoes for the wedding.”
“Can you please
not tell me these things just as we are packing up to leave early in the
morning? Which reminds me, your
sister doesn’t either.”
Second daughter: “Mom? Um…I can’t find that blouse—it’s just
disappeared. Now I don’t have anything
to wear to the wedding.”
Son: “Mom? If you’re out and you happen to find a pair
of shoes, I’ve outgrown my Sunday shoes.
I guess I might be able to wear a pair of Dad’s…”
Three shopping hours later we come home triumphantly bearing
three pairs of shoes and one dress, and plans to leave early for the trip have
evaporated. Which matters just a little,
since we’re driving 2 hours and then doing all the decorating for the
reception.
In the morning, along with the 1001 details, we say goodbyes
to our best-ever cat (no, we’re really not cat people) whom we opened our doors
to 12 years ago when he sat, a meager stray, on the front porch purring to let
us know he had found his family. We’re
expecting to have him put down.
On the way up north, the red and blue lights on my tailgate
were indeed meant this time for me. I
pull over with dread anticipation. Yes, (the unnamed person) who put on my new
license plates didn’t realize the tabs needed to go in the back. Yes, officer, we will switch them first
thing. The officer told me, when
(unnamed person) gets his license this next year I’ll have to switch his plates
so he gets to experience the joy of being pulled over—just for fun. He let me go without a ticket.
Then there was the ten-minute Costco stop for 200 roses
that, thanks to 10,000 shopping Canadians come over the border, and a car
accident in front of us, took well over an hour. With younger daughter trapped in about 10
inches of space with a wall of boxed roses bearing down on her lap to the
ceiling. It was in that moment that I
saw the old college roommate and bridesmaid I hadn’t seen in 20 years, across
the parking lot.
Hoping to start at 10am, I started at 3. Hoping to be done by 11pm, I was done at
4am. Everything converges to create a
new challenge and in the middle of the night one wonders about it all.
And I wasn’t even in the bridal party.
I tell this fraction of a string of misplaced events to come
to the main point. Weddings are wonderful!! Yes, they are worth all the effort, all
the planning, all the help of an army of volunteers, all the beauty created and
all the details secured. Because
weddings have significance far, far beyond the crazy romantic passion of the
couple being married. Weddings
accomplish far more than the sum of their million details and hundred things-gone-wrong.
IF.
If the heart’s desire of the wedded couple, and those
closest, most deeply desire that this wedding, this marriage, honor and glorify
and draw attention away from themselves to their Lord Jesus Christ.
Robbed of that essential ingredient of highest beauty, yes,
the wedding becomes nothing more than just a lot of ado over nothing much.
This past weekend, we had the pleasure of seeing an
extraordinary love story unfold into a new life together. This bride is the daughter of the woman I’ve
known since I was 8, close friends since 10, and prayed into the New Year, with
or without, since 14. We’ve shared a
long line of prayers for these children of ours, and this is the first
wedding.
Tomorrow, five thoughts about the real significance of a
wedding, beyond the bride and groom.
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