photo: moorephotography.com.au/
In a marriage, you’re
promising to care about everything. The
good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things—all of it,
all of the time, every day. You’re
saying, ‘your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.’ Your life will not go un-witnessed because I
will be your witness.’
From the movie, Shall We Dance?
On June 1st my friends
Stacy & Eddie celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. They got married in New Orleans and they and
all their guests did The Big Easy proud!
I will admit it’s the only wedding I ever officiated where I
“might” have had a hangover from the night before when Eddie led his boys down
Bourbon Street. TMI—I know!
Eddie & Stacy have created a
good life for themselves and their son.
A “good” life in that it’s been chock-full of accomplishments and good
fortune, tribulations and disappointments, clarity and confusion, decisiveness
and uncertainty. And throughout it all
great dinners and desserts laced through and through with conversations both silly
and nourishing, warm and heartening, and sometimes just plain whack-a-do.
What they’ve done is to live out
the ordinary routine of their daily life according to their vows: I will
love you and honor you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.
All so much simpler and so much harder,
so much sweeter and so much more confounding than they could have ever imagined
as they exchanged their vows in the grand room of the Ladies Opera Guild House.
All of it so much grander in its
faithful simplicity.
What they’ve done is to give
witness to each other’s life. They’ve
not let each other’s life go unnoticed.
Maybe that’s the great gift of
marriage, maybe that’s the great wedding vow:
“I will bear witness as you create a meaningful life. And together, we will bear witness to our shared
life.”
And from the shared witnessing comes all grace and meaning and hope.
