Our Wedding Story

People often ask me, "How's married life?"

My usual answer, "It's wonderful! I highly recommend it. You should try it sometime!"

November 15, 2014

Seriously though, married life truly is wonderful. I can't begin to tell you what a blessing it is to be married to my best friend, to laugh and cry and explore life with, to love and be loved by an amazing man who so completely holds my heart and with whom I fall more in love every day.

As long as we're being mushy, how about a story? Because who doesn't enjoy reading a good wedding story - and besides, I want to make sure all the details are recorded and never forgotten!

The altar

Decorations

It all begin when I was told I was about to be deployed, and we decided to get married a lot earlier than we had planned. At first we decided to simply get married by a justice of the peace with a nice ceremony later down the road, but when we went to get our marriage license, we discovered that our county no longer performs courthouse weddings! This led to a serious discussion, and about an hour later I called one of my best friends and, right out of the blue, asked, "Will you be my maid of honor and help me plan our wedding in 3 weeks?" Kait didn't even hesitate! We began planning that afternoon, over the phone (since she lives 2.5 hours away), and I also called my parents to let them know of our change of plans.

Kait and her mom Linda were fantastic - not only did they agree to let us use their spacious basement as a venue, but they even decorated for us! It turned out beautifully, with sunflowers and fall colors as the theme and a silky runner for an aisle between rows of chairs. My mom came early, so she and I drove to Kait's house the night before the wedding. We rushed around to get last minute details taken care of, and then the big day was here.

Final details

I woke up in the morning to a very nice quiche made by Linda, and almost immediately began getting ready. Another dear friend, Cristin, was kind enough to not only bring her keyboard and perform the music for our wedding, but she also came early and did my hair.

Guests began arriving, as did my fiance. I wasn't in my dress yet, so I gave him a quick kiss, introduced him to my dad, and then I was back to preparing. With makeup and hair done, my mom cleared the living room area so I could slip downstairs unseen and sneak into the basement to finish getting ready in a small closeted area.

Both sets of parents

Remember "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue"? It was one of the few traditions I intended to follow (along with not letting the groom see the dress!). Something old was a hanky belonging to my great-grandmother, which I carried in my hand to help with sweaty palms. Something new was the pearl necklace and earrings I made to wear with my dress. Something borrowed was my mother's garter, and something blue was nail polish on my toes!

About a week before the ceremony, I had been in a slight panic because I had everything scheduled except for the officiant. Thankfully we were blessed to find an officiant available for the day at New Chapter Weddings, and they were even willing to work with us on the wording and itinerary of the ceremony. In fact, Don and I picked out and modified all the wording, from the greeting and opening prayer to the vows to the blessing at the end - it was all just the way we wanted it. Clark was very professional and really helped make our ceremony exactly what we were hoping for.

Maid of honor and best man

Anyway, back to me hiding in the closet... I was finally completely ready, just waiting on everyone else, and pacing from nerves. I got to say hi to a few family members and have a few photos taken, then I stayed in the closet while all our guests came downstairs and filled in the seats and Cristin played music we had picked out. Most of the guests were family members, with a few good friends included. Don's best man, Joe, was a coworker and very good friend of both of us; we had gone shopping with him the week before and picked out a nice shirt, tie, and slacks for the occasion. When everyone was in place, Joe and Kait came to the head of the runner/aisle. Cristin played as they walked to the front of the room, then it was time for me and my dad.

Dad and I

Daddy, bless his heart, didn't know it was supposed to be a slow walk down the aisle! We were at the end of the aisle before Cristin even began playing, and we stayed there until she finished "All of Me" by John Legend (which has always been our song). Then Dad sat down, Don and I held hands at the front, and the ceremony began, with a coworker's wife doing our photography and my adopted grandfather running a video camera.

It wasn't a very long ceremony, but most of it is kind of blurry in my mind. I remember holding hands and gazing lovingly into Don's eyes...and communicating simply with eyebrow movements and tiny facial expressions - we knew what each other was thinking well enough to understand! My mom and Don's dad each read Bible passages - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and Ecclesiastes 4:9-12. We pledged ourselves to each other, repeated the vows, and exchanged our rings (Don tried to put my ring on my middle finger, but I tried to put his ring on the wrong hand! We got it all sorted out).

Next we did a sand ceremony. The symbolism behind the sand ceremony is beautiful - two colors of sand mixing together, each staying itself but becoming part of the other, never again to be separated.

Then there was the blessing, the kiss (whoo-wee!!), and the pronouncement, and it was over! We walked back down the aisle to the closet, with Joe and Kait behind us, then went upstairs to form a receiving line and greet our guests. Needless to say, it was very emotional!

We finished having our official photos taken before the photographer left - and #3 managed to be in most of them - we didn't even tell her, she just sat perfectly in each shot. We then mingled with our guests, talking and snacking on meatballs, chicken nuggets, chips and salsa, etc. (again, thanks to Kait and Linda!). My dad had to leave pretty quickly, but it was nice to see both sets of parents and several other out-of-town and even out-of-state family members.


We had chocolate cupcakes with small autumn leaves set out for everyone, and a special triple-chocolate cake for us. The cake topper was a small wedding couple figurine from the ceramic Christmas Village line; our intention is to build a village, one piece per year, and every year the wedding couple will be part of our holiday traditions. How many people know where their cake topper is today? It will be a fun tradition to keep through the years. When the time came to cut the cake, we worked together to hold a bright orange knife and cut a slice of cake. As relatives told us to cut the slice in half, I cut it exactly in half lengthwise - my mom finds this extremely amusing. Anyway, Don very gently fed me a piece of cake, and I kindly fed him a piece back, though deliberately smearing chocolate on his cheek!

Two families become one

As guests left to travel home, I finally changed into more comfortable clothes and helped with cleaning everything up. We got our things loaded into our vehicles, leaving my truck with my mom (who would stay overnight and drive it to our house the next day), and piling into Don's truck. Phil and Cristin both forgot items at Kait's house and we had to meet them down the road, then Don and #3 and I were off to our honeymoon.

We had a night booked at a nice hotel about halfway between Kait's house and our home, the main attraction to the hotel room being the two-person whirlpool tub, perfect for relaxing after a few hectic weeks of planning. Though it was stressful at times, with the invaluable help of family and friends we managed to pull off our wedding in 3 weeks. We are very unique people, and our wedding reflected both the traditions of our past and our future goals. I'm so glad we did it, and thankful for all the memories!

I'd love to hear about your wedding memories - or future goals. And may you be as blessed in love as my wonderful sweetheart and me!

Jobs vs Careers

There's a pile of laundry calling my name. I suppose I should go fold it...but I'm procrastinating. It's my last day off before another work week and I'm relaxing on the couch, wearing pajamas and watching Frasier on Netflix with a bowl of chocolate ice cream. Ahhh...

The new job is...well...I like the hours and the schedule, I like spending more time with my sweetheart and my puppy, and I'm really glad to be out of the previous job. But the job itself is an extremely high-activity job involving 15-20 miles of walking every night, plus strenuous bending, reaching, squatting, and stretching. It's literally tearing my body apart. I haven't hurt this much since basic training. My back, shoulders, and neck are starting to get used to it, but the old knee injury is acting up, and my feet hurt nearly unbearably by the end of the shift. I don't mean to complain, I just don't know how much longer I can take this job...and to be honest it's disappointing.

I've been struggling a lot lately with trying to figure out where I'm going in life. I'm so incredibly thankful for an amazing husband, who is kind and understanding and supportive of whatever I want to do. The problem? I don't know what I want to do.

I've wanted to be a cop since I was a kid, so I became an MP, and quickly realized that it's not exactly what I thought it was. Police departments are run by politics, it's hard to get in unless you know someone, and once you're in it's still not much of a life for a family until you've been in long enough to make something more than street patrol. To be honest, the Army isn't exactly what I thought it was either, and I've found myself disillusioned with where I had always thought I would go in life.

My team leader made an interesting comment the other day. Someone mentioned an upcoming career fair and he replied, "I need a career. I have a job but I don't have a career."

That's exactly where both my husband and I find ourselves. He has a decent job but not one that he wants to do for the next 30 years, and I have a job I'm not sure I'll last another few months in, much less years. Very few people even have careers these days, and a lot of the people that thought they had careers ended up losing their jobs in recent days due to our country's economy shift. The large amount of unemployed people with age and experience makes it even harder for those of us just starting out to get career-starting jobs, because employers can afford to be picky and choose the better qualified, well experienced candidates instead of the entry-level like us.

We're praying about my honey going back into active duty military life, which would be beneficial on many levels: we would make a lot better income, allowing us to start a family when we're ready, and also allowing me to go back to school to finish my degree and choose a line of work I actually want to do. Of course, that begs the obvious question: what do I really want to do?

There will always be politics, stress, unpleasant people, and personal issues in every line of work, but I still have hopes that maybe someday I could actually look forward to going to work instead of dreading it. That maybe someday I could be proud of what I'm doing instead of being embarrassed to tell people what job I'm working. That maybe someday I could have a career instead of just a job, a long term option to help provide for our family instead of just something I have to do to pay the bills and make ends meet. Is that too much to hope for?

So here I am, an adult woman and a happily married wife, still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I'm tired of living paycheck to paycheck, tired of trying to make ends meet, tired of going to jobs I don't like. And this is not the life that either of us want for us or for a family someday. We certainly can't afford to start a family now, nor would it be fair to bring kids into a still somewhat financially unstable home.

(Side note... before you jump to conclusions, yes we budget, yes we are careful with our finances, and yes we are still barely making ends meet. That's just life right now, working dead-end jobs because nobody wants to hire someone with less experience - but how do you get experience if you're not hired? So yes we're doing all we can with the income we are blessed to have, but it's still not a long-term solution.)

Someday, God be willing, there will be a couple rocking chairs sitting on a front porch on a piece of land somewhere. If we make it to those rocking chairs and look back on working through everything together, it will all be worth it. So many couples have gone through much, much worse situations and come out all right in the end, but the process to getting there is slow and we can't see past the next turn in the road. Only God knows where we'll be going next, and in the meantime it's up to us to trust Him and figure out the next steps to take. Until then, we'll just do everything we can to enjoy the journey...

Easter 2015

Religious Freedom

It seems that most of the country is currently in a debate over the Religious Freedom Act and the various stories, debates, and discussions involving it. There's a story about a pizza shop that seems full of holes, and very vague discussion about a bakery, and pretty much everyone is jumping on the bandwagon to voice their opinion [without necessarily knowing the facts]. I generally try to stay out of politics, but it's got me thinking...what is religious freedom really, and why do we need it?

Somehow the biggest debate seems to involve gay rights. As in, if you support religious freedom, you are automatically anti-gay. Never mind all the other issues involved in religious freedom - somehow the gay card is the one being played here every time I turn around.

The real question seems to be: can we force citizens, specifically business owners, to act in ways that go against what they believe? And if you boil that down even further, the meat at the bottom is even simpler: can we force citizens to believe what we tell them to by defining beliefs according to social convention?

Let me put it this way. Do citizens have the right to believe whatever they choose? And do they have the right to believe whatever they choose despite how those beliefs cause them to act towards their fellow citizens?

America was founded because of the very concept of religious freedom. Our forefathers believed in every person's right to believe what they chose (or perhaps I should say every white male's right to believe, since at the time that was their definition of a person). They made sure the citizens were entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" - in whatever form that may take. America's founding fathers held an interesting mix of Protestant, Catholic, Freemason, and a variety of other beliefs and saw no excuse to deny anyone the right to choose their beliefs.

Fast forward a little bit. At one time in our country's history, many devout, well-meaning people - of different faiths but predominantly Christian - owned slaves. And most of these Christians were able to find Biblical justification for owning slaves, or at least that's what they claimed. After all, if you try hard enough, you will always find a way to justify what you want to do. Does believing that you can own another human being, or even believing that a person isn't actually a human being with human rights simply because of the color of their skin, make it right? Did the slave owners have religious freedom, the right to believe as they chose?

Here's my stance: a person has the right to whatever belief they may choose, but they do not have the right to justify unlawful or immoral actions based on those beliefs. Simply put, you can believe whatever you want as long as you do no harm to anyone else.

Forcing a person to believe a certain way is wrong; forcing a person to act in lawful, moral behaviors is right. If your religion requires you to bow to the sun every morning, then forcing you to stop bowing would be wrong; if your religion requires you to kill a person every morning, restraining you from murdering people would be right. If your religion requires you to stay away from certain kinds of animals, then forcing you to eat or prepare them would be wrong; if your religion requires you to spit on people of a certain race or color, restraining you from assaulting people with bodily fluids would be right. You are entitled to your beliefs; you are not entitled to unethical behaviors, no matter their justification.

Fast forward to today's issues - specifically, the small business owner who does not wish to provide services to certain patrons. Is it right for a bakery to refuse their products to a gay wedding on religious grounds? What if it was a Jewish deli asked to cater BLT sandwiches for a wedding - could we force them to cook bacon despite their religious objections? Or a Muslim restaurant asked to serve ham, or a Jehovah's Witnesses church asked to rent their hall for a Christmas party, or an Amish visitor photographed against their will? Where is the line drawn between violating the religious rights of the business owner and offending the human rights of the customer?

Whew. Deep stuff, guys. A little above my pay grade, honestly. I think I'll stick with the stuff I know God said - love God and love your neighbor, do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. That's pretty much all He really cares about. As long as I follow that, I know I'll be in right standing before Him, and I'll let Him take care of everyone else.

A kiss from #3

The Weight of Forgiveness

Image not mine

Good Friday, 2012. 

The paper rested in my hand, intimidating even in its diminutive size. This little sticky note represented my sin, but as I closed my eyes, the weight of my sin threatened to overwhelm me. Words catapulted toward me - words like pride, disbelief, ingratitude, complacency, disrespect... How could I sum up my sin on this little yellow strip of paper?

Slowly I began to write, then faster, until the side with the adhesive seemed nearly covered in words and I felt I could not write more without repeating variations of things I had already written. I stared at the sticky note as the pastor's words continued, speaking about the sins represented here being the reason for a death. A man died on a cross to erase that slip of paper. The familiar story, yet somehow more alive, more real, as the evidence stared me in the face. I was the guilty one who condemned an innocent man. Mine is the sin that caused Him to die. My life is the one He gave up His life to save.

My attention was directed to the wooden cross lying on the stage, red ribbons flowing from the upright nails driven into the beams. At the call, each person in attendance rose and attached their sticky note to the cross.

Suddenly the small yellow paper felt so heavy. I looked at what I had written. My heart seemed to rise in my chest. Forgive me, Lord.

Immediately the answer came back. I already have.

IT IS FINISHED.

I followed the stream of people approaching the cross. I knelt near the foot. I don't know why You want me, Lord, but You paid for this sinner and I am Yours. Gently I dropped the sticky note onto the wooden beam. As I rose, a church elder took my hand and pressed a small nail into my palm. I walked back to my seat and held the nail, a symbol of what had been done for me.

As the last person left the cross, it was nearly completely covered in little yellow pieces of paper. The weight of forgiveness suddenly hit me. Every single sticky note represented a person for whom Christ died, a person with sins for which He atoned. Every single sticky note represented weight of guilt carried no more, but transferred to the shoulders of the perfect sacrifice. Every single sticky note commemorated gratitude for an unbelievable, inconceivable, beautiful, wonderful Savior!