Moments from a Wedding
Recently, I was at my first wedding in two years, oddly enough at the same location as the last one - which is pretty cool because it is on a lake surrounded by mountains. There are moments when I am not so caught up in the party inside my head, when I get to hear and see moments of grace. This was one of those nights and...
I heard a 4-year-old boy ask, "When are they going to Kiss?"
I met an Iranian woman who has only been in the U.S. a year and is making a career as a photographer, that, through broken english, said profoundly and intricately more about the Art of pictures in ten-minutes than books have said over a lifetime.
I saw the face of Redemption as two jr. high sweethearts with 20 years of painful and adventurous story behind them exchanged vows for the first time and it made more sense than any other marriage I've seen.
I heard from a man I've known from a distance as he talked of not ever having a context for the idea of God as Father (since he never knew his dad) and how surprised he is at how God meets him in ways He will be seen most.
I heard a dad's deep gratitude and pride as he talked about his son, the Groom, and how he saw so much redemption in the evening's celebration; having watched his son go through a previous marriage that ended in a heart-wrenching divorce - what divorce isn't heart-wrenching? They were the words of a dad that knows his son knows full well what he is getting into and stood beside him as his Best Man, as if to say "I believe in you and your heart, that's why I am here, son."
I watched that 4-year-old boy dance with uninhibited abandon and style surrounded by adults making us all understand what it means to dance in the first place.
And morning came too early but not without rainfalls of gratitude for all that I saw, and all I heard, for being reminded that I was a 4-year-old-boy once, born with the same kind of reckless abandon, that I still am that boy in so many good ways; that redemption isn't just some battered old religious word because it is far too brilliant to be contained religiously; that I met an Iranian photographer, a fatherless man, a gently proud father; And weddings sometimes pinch a corner of reality, peeling it back to show what's on the Other side of the Sun.
I heard a 4-year-old boy ask, "When are they going to Kiss?"
I met an Iranian woman who has only been in the U.S. a year and is making a career as a photographer, that, through broken english, said profoundly and intricately more about the Art of pictures in ten-minutes than books have said over a lifetime.
I saw the face of Redemption as two jr. high sweethearts with 20 years of painful and adventurous story behind them exchanged vows for the first time and it made more sense than any other marriage I've seen.
I heard from a man I've known from a distance as he talked of not ever having a context for the idea of God as Father (since he never knew his dad) and how surprised he is at how God meets him in ways He will be seen most.
I heard a dad's deep gratitude and pride as he talked about his son, the Groom, and how he saw so much redemption in the evening's celebration; having watched his son go through a previous marriage that ended in a heart-wrenching divorce - what divorce isn't heart-wrenching? They were the words of a dad that knows his son knows full well what he is getting into and stood beside him as his Best Man, as if to say "I believe in you and your heart, that's why I am here, son."
I watched that 4-year-old boy dance with uninhibited abandon and style surrounded by adults making us all understand what it means to dance in the first place.
And morning came too early but not without rainfalls of gratitude for all that I saw, and all I heard, for being reminded that I was a 4-year-old-boy once, born with the same kind of reckless abandon, that I still am that boy in so many good ways; that redemption isn't just some battered old religious word because it is far too brilliant to be contained religiously; that I met an Iranian photographer, a fatherless man, a gently proud father; And weddings sometimes pinch a corner of reality, peeling it back to show what's on the Other side of the Sun.