It’s that time of year, when brides-to-be and their future grooms do their final mental check, crossing off every item as they make sure they have paid all the contracts and finalized every last detail for their special day, the day they share their vows and commit to each other in marriage. And for that reason, I love this time of year. It seems like forever since I was a bride, yet I will never forget the mountain of anticipation and how it grew within me, every day when we were just weeks from our wedding celebration.
Today’s couples have so many additional considerations added to their “to do” lists – the unique and clever proposal captured to share with the world on social media, the Save-the-Date post cards, the “do we do a destination wedding” and “how do we want to “brand” our wedding” questions, filling out the Gift Registry’s at multiple favorite online stores and still so much more. Just thinking about trying to plan a wedding right now, especially on the heels of a worldwide pandemic puts my head in a spin.
As I think of my own wedding which truly was a lifetime ago, I am thankful that even in its simplicity, there were profound moments and lifelong lessons learned from the commitment that was sealed that day. We married young, he was 25 and I was 21. We were in love and certain our love was all we needed. I wasn’t your typical girl who dreamed all her life of her wedding day, so we made decisions together and had a host of loved ones around us, supporting us and helping us to make our wedding perfect. My parents never talked about finances but I am certain it helped that I didn’t want a formal wedding. I wore a $250 Victorian lace dress, he wore a linen suit, my brides maids wore gowns of their choosing and the groomsmen each wore their own suits. My best friend, her wonderful husband and our dear friend played the wedding music and sang “our song” by Dan Fogelberg, adding a very sweet personal touch. As we planned, it all came together just perfectly.
Then it came time to plan our ceremony. Back then, writing your own personal wedding vows wasn’t yet common practice. I always thought we’d use the traditional vows, as long as we made a minor change (I opted to leave “obey” out - maybe that will be a blog for another day). What we really wanted in our ceremony was to share about the fullness of God’s love, the same wonderful love that brought us together, with hopes that it would be an invitation for our guests to know this Jesus-love in a fuller more personal way, too.
We wanted to express what God’s love meant to us yet we knew we didn’t want to focus on our own story, because ours was still very new and hopeful and far from perfect. So in order to highlight our goal of God’s perfect and complete love, we decided (like gazillions of other couples) that we would read 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Many marriage commitments have been sealed by that beautiful passage of scripture. Mine certainly was. It has been the blueprint of what I longed to be and it has echoed in my ear frequently throughout the challenges of my life and my union with another human being in marriage. In my bible the pages are well worn and marked with notes and the chapter title reads, “Love is the Greatest.”
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but did not love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but did not love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I did not love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever!”
Every time I read that passage, if I may be completely honest, even after years of marriage, the 1 Corinthians 13 love goal often seems illusive and I admit there are days that I’ve simply wanted to give up. Then I remember our wedding and this passage, and I’m humbled for the perfect love with which God has so loved me, year after year, through my best and worst days. And I think this prayer, “If anyone should give up, it would be You, Lord! But You haven’t and You won’t, so I ask for Your help to love others like You love me!”
At times when I’ve felt life’s desperation and prayed that simple prayer, it serves as my reminder that I need to turn to my bible so I can read again, His blueprint for love – the kind of love that heals, helps, and hallows the mundane into the extraordinary, the marginalized into the reputed, the sinner into the saint.
Looking back to my wedding day and the sincerity of our love along with the naivety of our youth, I can without a doubt testify that if we didn’t have that perfect healing love of God, I would not be where I am today. When we shared our vows all those years ago, Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church was intended to become the foundation of our marriage. With that foundation, and the love of a miracle working God, we have been able to stand together, firm footed in God’s love, many times humbled, forgiving and forgiven and frequently feeling unworthy, yet choosing to stand together with Jesus, because we wouldn’t be standing without Him.
Through the years, I believe we are slowly getting closer to actually being able to love like Jesus, as we see what God’s perfect love can do. And it all began with two young kids, inexperienced and in love, who chose to invite God to teach them what love is as they started their life together. He taught them, He rescued them, He cried with them and He celebrated them because He believed in their potential to love. And as their love grew, so did their confidence and they learned how to love others His way too.
Together they discovered that learning to love is the longest lesson in life but if love is the greatest, it is worth a lifetime to learn.