A wedding to remember – beautiful, joyful, playful – hundreds of guests – big yellow flowers – worship songs – my friend the bride reciting her vows at an excitedly frenetic pace…
Then the reception – candles everywhere – friends I hadn’t seen for months or years – a new baby – potluck hors d’oevres – a slow dance with my husband…
For eight years I couldn’t get through a wedding or even news of an engagement without feeling an aching wistful disappointment at best and often sorrow or anger beginning to rise in my heart. But today, no tears. It was precious and inspiring. To be able to enjoy a wedding, wow. We have put so much “for worse” behind us that I never want to take for granted the blessing it is to live “for better” these days. I found myself trying to remember those wedding vows I spoke nine years past.
Do you, Kristina, take this man, whose hand you hold, to be your husband, to live together after God’s holy covenant of marriage? Do you promise to love him, serve him, comfort him, honor and obey him, and being a faithful and true wife, forsake all others, cleaving to him alone, as long as you both shall live?
I do.
I ask those present to witness that I, Kristina, do take you, Richard, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, in every circumstance; in good times and in bad, in wealth or in poverty, in sickness and in health. I promise to honor and respect you as God’s gift to me. I will, by God’s grade and enablement, be a faithful wife and loving support to you. I will esteem you as the head of our home even as Christ is the head of the church. I will encourage the development of God’s gifts in you. I will love and cherish you until we are parted in death, according to God’s holy covenant. Today, I pledge my life to you.
Richard, I love you as a genuine and faithful friend I’ve been able to count on and trust in from the beginning, and I look forward to our friendship growing more precious through the years. With this ring, I pledge myself to you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, that’s what I said, and I meant it.
I do. At least I want to. I want to be all those things and more. Richard said during the ceremony that it’s good for us to attend a wedding once in a while. Perhaps he was also pondering our roles in each other’s lives. Well I for one feel motivated to take another look at my covenant to my husband before God and resolve once again to stay true to my first love.
This is beautiful! I think this sums up a lot of “brides,” even the older ones like me. After a few years of romantic bliss, the nostalgia of those few awakening moments of perfect love whisked away to the numerous duties of housecleaning, jobs, and as parents brings us into reality, and we sometimes forget our covenant with God and our first stirrings of love and how that made us feel. I always remember the romance caught at the beginning of our courtship, but passion and nostalgia don’t always remain, and turning back the pages of my life to the covenant made between myself and God brings me to the forefront of my hope within my marriage. I list all the reasons why I married my husband, and I tell those reasons to my children so they can marry for likewise reasons. Those reasons are because of such an understanding man, his faith in God, his love for me, and his love for our children. Those are enduring reasons for love, and for that which I cling to. I hope and pray many more happy years you two will share together, and with a growing family!