As I prepare for a wedding this weekend, I recall my own feelings of both excitement and fear when I was preparing to get married 24 years ago. I am glad that we didn't live together first and then formalize the relationship, that I was forced to confront what was and should be a life-changing decision and the break that it represents with a former way of life. I am glad this couple is making even better decisions than we made and are anxious to talk about their future together because they want all the wisdom they can get as they enter this new life.
I recall the sense I had of being completely unprepared for what I was about to do. A few days before the wedding I had a "morose" evening when I realized that I was moving into new territory and my childhood was giving way to real adulthood. I had graduated from college and gotten a job and an apartment yet this step was bigger than any of those things and I suddenly knew it in a way that shook my core. I never thought about calling Suzanne and bailing out of the wedding but I felt like I was in free fall.
If I had any sense of what lay in store I probably wouldn't have done it based on the knowledge I had at the time. I wouldn't willingly have put her through the twists and turns, heartache and difficulty that was ahead if I had known it. As I look back though, I realize I couldn't have made it without her and all those difficulties have shaped and molded us in ways that made us one flesh, just as God intended. Maybe that whole running the rough river thing in the movie The African Queen that brings Bogie and Hepburn's characters together isn't so contrived after all.
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