Nuptial Nostalgia

     With Valentines Day fast approaching I can't help but find myself looking back to the most romantic experience I've had to date; getting married. Not just the ceremony, or the reception, not even the proposal, the wedding night or the honeymoon... the whole process. Yes, planning a wedding was hectic and at the time seemed far from romantic, but it was, as it should have been, a melding of two people into one. It was painful and uncomfortable at times figuring out how to be one person while at the same time still being ourselves, and deciding how to incorporate all that was important to both of us into one cohesive event... but it was also exhilarating, blissful and above all intimate. I had never felt closer to my now-husband, or to my God. There is something about weddings, once you get past all the Disney Princess / fairy tale hype, that feels truly ethereal. Spiritual. I think it's because marriage is a worldly display of an unworldly love.

     That morning when I woke up I felt notably excited and slightly nervous of course, but I didn't feel different. I expected to feel different. The transformation I had expected did take place, more intensely than I had anticipated, but it didn't happen suddenly in a single moment. The process started long before our wedding day, and although a major shift did come to pass during that sacred ceremony, the combining of two people into one had already begun. When asked later if being married felt different I was better able to pinpoint how; it was in the way I saw him. He had become a man to me, he was no longer my boyfriend, neither of those words applied anymore... he wasn't a boy, and he was not a friend. That isn't to say that he was before. The shift was inside me, deep within my heart. The lens through which I viewed him before was shattered and a new vision of the man before me was clear. And, as is often the case with major life changes I couldn't feel the change in myself until it was already complete.

     So many people tell you that "it goes by so fast", and in one way they were right, it did go by fast, as all days do. But in a much more real sense, I experienced a lingering effect to each precious moment. A bleeding of each minute into the next as the day seemed to span out before us in a euphoric conflict between finite and infinite. As the time passed it seemed to compound on itself as if I were experiencing every moment up until the one currently manifesting itself, all at once, and somehow still taking in the nuances of that single glimpse in time as a stand-alone encounter. It was almost what one would describe as an out-of-body occurrence, but not quite. I'm lost for an accurate description...

     It's hard to believe how much has changed since that day. A season of constant growth and metamorphosis. The formation of a family appears sudden and so final from the outside, but in truth it is a gradual thing that evolves and matures both before and after it's stamped "date of origin". There is something about our future selves and our future families that is with us all along that only reveals itself over time, just as a tattoo often originates in the heart and mind of the person, a part of them long before ink touches skin. It is only after the pain of the process, the deliberate, intentional acts that bring these pieces of ourselves into an active and real state of being, that people outside of ourselves are able to see them.

"But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.
To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected."

- Madeleine L'Engle (The Irrational Season)

All photos included in this post are c/o Josh Rogerson Photography

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