On the eve of our wedding

To have and to hold, from this day forth. Photo by Kelly Prizel Photography

As if drawn by magnets, I have ended up behind, near, or next to the same couple at church every weekend for the past month. They are later-middle-aged. Both are overweight. The wife uses a cane for her pronounced limp. The husband is losing his hair. And always, always, they are touching each other.

His hand never leaves her -- her arm, her waist, her back. She leans her head on his shoulder. They hold hands during the homily. They caress each other in that deliberate way that bears the hallmark of conscious, intentional connection. In sickness and in health, in good times and bad, they hold each other -- not as a drowning person grips a preserver, but as a parent holds a newborn, with quiet, protective confidence.

Even when I'm three pews back, I feel their warmth. I absorb their comfort. They look at each other's aging, asymmetrical faces with the kind of joyful gaze that makes the object immortal and invincible. They are in love, loved, simply love.

Tonight, on the eve of our wedding, I pray that my husband-to-be and I become this couple. May we become this way to each other. May we become love.


Prayer #302: Beyond Words

This is serious, God. This is real. This is raw and daunting and profound. This moment evokes mortality alongside meaning, sacrifice alongside choice. Our vows are not lines to mumble; they are promises to solemnify.

Tonight I feel the gravity of that solemnity, the heft of the rest of our lives. We are not sentimental about this moment, God. Marriage will take us to our graves. It will wear us down, wring us dry, ask everything we have, and we are pretty much guaranteed to stumble because we are imperfect, imprecise humans.

But we will succeed where it matters most, God. We will keep the promise to practice love with each other, so that in loving and trying and failing and loving still, we will learn what it means to love you.

Amen.