Celebrate Love!

In honor of Mark and Lindsay's first anniversary, here is a photo of their wedding day and a great tribute written by my brother, Keith, in his newsletter last April;

"It was a very cool wedding!

Outdoors, 49 degrees with a 30 mph winds - that makes for a cool wedding. But it really wasn’t the wind chill that made it cool. It was the way the couple weathered the worst. As all their best laid wedding plans were being blown away all around them, they couldn’t stop smiling at each other and at everybody else. When the petite bride shivered, her gallant groom gave up his jacket for her. So, there they were on the most important dress-up day of their lives - he in his shirt sleeves, and she in a clownishly oversized tux jacket. It was beautiful!

What salvaged their “ruined” perfect day was that they didn’t care. They were living out the “for better or for worse” of their vows right in front of us and that warmed inside where the wind can’t reach.

When the candles all blew out and the couple tried in vain to light their unity candle, the grinning groom announced to the audience, “You’ll just have to use your imaginations.”

And I did. I imagined that any couple who could laugh at these calamities on such an important day could handle anything that might come against them in the coming decades. I imagined them 40 years later, hair graying, faces wrinkled, but still smiling at each other.

That’s what real love does. It “always perseveres” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

So many marriages (and friendships, and church relationships) fail for lack of perseverance. Winds blow, the relationship gets chilly, and the flames go out. When the situation falls short of perfection, as it inevitably will, too many people pack it in instead of persevering. In so doing, they cut love off before it has opportunity to really bloom. Real love grows strong, not in the absence of difficulty, but because of it. Love perseveres.

It is those who persevere together through all their differences who find genuine love - and the joy that always tags along behind it. It is old friends who have laughed together and cried together, who have fought and made up – those are the ones who understand: “Love never fails” (13:8).

It was a very cool wedding. Not because of the temperature. Not because of the beautiful setting, the excellent music, nor the touching words. It was cool because of what was unspoken, but clearly demonstrated – love perseveres. Always!"