Love and Weddings

Annie was the perfect bride. Her dress, made in Germany, was absolutely stunning. She wore little white flowers in her hair and carried a bouquet of white and red roses. Her man? A Navy lieutenant fully decked out in his crisp white uniform. As they were leaving the church after the ceremony, the couple walked through an Arch of Swords. It was just like a movie: romantic and beautiful.

I'm always surprised when I cry at weddings because I know the drill. I've attended slightly less than 278 (yeah, I went to CNU). But watching Annie dance with the man of her dreams just naturally caused tears to well up. I was realizing that the girl I "grew up with" for three years of college was now someone's wife. She even had our favorite sonnet read at the ceremony:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

-William Shakespeare

I love this poem because I memorized it in my favorite class for my favorite teacher in high school. But I also love it because it's so real. Shakespeare spells out for us exactly what love is and is not. It does not change when it discovers a fault or seek to transform the other by removing annoying habits. Those are two things women are good at. We get these insecurities and it's like the only way we know how to hold on is to press in harder. That's why we get a reputation for "nagging". We know what it is we want so we try overly hard to get it. That's why Sara Groves describes grace as "an invitation to be beautiful." As we give grace to those who don't give us exactly what we want from them, we become beautiful and more like the Lord. A woman who gives grace is not only beautiful, but loving. Her love is an "ever fixed mark" because it comes out of an overabundance of the love she is receiving from her Father God. That's the kind of love I want to give; the kind that is beautiful, selfless and unbridled by time or age.

My prayer is that maybe one day the Lord will transform me into that kind of woman- who is clothed with a gracious love and laughs at the days to come.

In the meantime, after all of my tears and celebration tonight, my wallet and I are thankful to announce that the wedding season has ended- at least for this year. My boyfriend will be happy to announce that I did not catch the bouquet, in fact I screamed and backed away as it fell to my feet. Ah yes, free and easy down the road I go...

Until next spring and the next batch of CNU engagements.