Monday, March 26, 2007

a wedding is a day, a marriage is a lifetime

this is the central theme of engagement encounter - how to focus on your relationship for your marriage rather than picking colors and arranging seats. and it makes a lot of sense. there's so many things to remember about this weekend but i think my fondest memory was something called the betrothal. one of the facilitating couples read theirs out loud to each other and to us and then we were supposed to write ours to our fiance. they played this song called "i will never be the same" and i wish i had heard who the artist was but i didn't. and the words were so perfect. i really am not going to be the same - i'm going to be mrs. joseph lopez - a wife, a lover, and a best friend. always. from this day forward. and it made me happy.
i told joey that before we met, i always had the same prayer - i asked the Lord for some direction in life - what did He want of me? what was my purpose? would i journey by myself? this was during the two years before i met him and i prayed about it all the time. and i really didn't know what i was doing in all walks of life - relationships, career, everything. and i told Joey that God gave me many blessings that year. I told him that I didn't think that it was coincidence that God gave my vocation for nursing at the exact time that we got together. So God gave me another vocation - to the married life - the same time that He gave me my vocation to be a nurse. He is a clever one. and through it all, we've grown and we continue to grow, not separately, but together. strength in unity, unity in faith. i use this a lot in a lot of my own talks and it's very true. i learned a lot this weekend and so did joey. we're both happy we went. it was so nice to see people two by two all weekend. everyone in couples introducing their fiances. so nice and so natural to all.
one of the other facilitating couples were named Kathie and Joe. and Joe's first story was about how it would take him 5 different alarm clocks for him to wake up and Kathie would still have to call and wake him up. and Kathie was a nurse too. later that weekend we asked Kathie if her name was Kathryn - and it was! so they were Katherine and Joseph and we were Kathryn and Joseph. They're our twins except fourty five years down the road! But if they can do it, so can we =)

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

Very uplifting. Its just one day. I'll have to tell myself that everytime I'm about to have a bridezilla meltdown.

dorothy said...

that's so nice! i've never heard a bad story about engagement encounter! in fact, i hear the best stories from those who were the most reluctant to attend!