Wedding Week

Well, we have made it folks. It’s wedding week. Here is what I know…

My first born girl is more organized than I could have ever taught her to be and she’s spoiled me for any other major event in the future. 

My husband is so ready to trade in his current event planner of a wife for the former more fun and energetic version. Side note: we have planned our own “parents of the bride” honeymoon following all of the wedding bossiness…more to come on that. 

Lauren and I have pinned our little hearts out on Pinterest and googled everything from wedding hair to the number of mini cupcakes that will fit on a 12″ cake stand. For the love!

We have mastered a thousand lists and google documented our very lives…all for wedding day wonderment. We have herded a bazillion moving parts and various human out of town travelers. We have packed up every detail of wedding day decor and supplies and labeled them with the utmost administrative genius. We have bought the whole world and venmoed all the people. 

We have had days of low moral and short fuses. Days of over the top joy and a thousand laughs. We have marveled at God’s goodness and extended grace to ourselves and others.

We have planned and prepared over the span of 8 months for a wedding…One that will be meaningful, God honoring and beautiful, and it will last only one full glorious celebratory day.

However, her Dad and I, by God’s amazing grace, have prepared our baby girl over the span of her 22 year old life for a marriage…one which will live out decades and decades of days. Not because marriage is the end goal…heavens no. But because loving God and loving others are the end goals. 

Mamas and Papas! What are we doing if we are not raising our babies to be others-oriented. Life is relationship. It is mission. It is leveraging who we are for the sake of something bigger than ourselves. God gave us purpose. He uses people, place, and time to make an impact for His work. Marriage is a unique platform for that. Marriage is not only intimacy and  companionship but an incredible opportunity. It’s an opportunity for God to cultivate character within our broken selves and use our “two are better than oneness” to make a difference in this world. 

Hold on tight to the hope of God’s unseen inner workings beneath the surface of our sons and daughters’ outward shortcomings. Mamas, refuse to settle for “how it is” and never stop fighting for “how it could be” when growing our kids. Pressing into our teens when they want to shut down. Loving them enough to have the hard and awkward conversations. And extending grace when we feel like losing hope. And pray to God that He fixes all the things we missed and messed up.

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.

Psalm 138:8

I have absolutely loved the process of planning this incredible day with my daughter. But I have loved even more witnessing how God has grown her up in spite of her imperfect parents. Still…He has cultivated a young woman with a capacity to love another deeply, sacrificially, and unconditionally. To make much of Jesus in her marriage, to see beyond her own desires, to have a hope and a future…Of living out her days with meaning beyond her wedding day. 

XOXO,