Wedding Number Five
This August the 2nd will mark 35 years to the day I married the most handsome golden-haired boy in Arvada. The year was 1986, and I walked down the aisle in a long-sleeved Joslins wedding dress, purchased at none other than my beloved Westminster Mall. My sisters and friends wore pink bridesmaid dresses nearly matching the mauve-colored padded pews in our church’s sanctuary and the bridal party walked down the aisle to Amy Grant’s El Shaddai. Our wedding reception was held downstairs, in the gymnasium where we first met, and where our children would some day eat lunch in the Christian school planted at our church campus. We served a modest spread: an upscale-for-the-80’s sampling of appetizers to go with our old-school bazillion tiered wedding cake, complete with a water fountain and white plastic stairs. To round things out, we served pink punch, rose-shaped butter mints and Jordan almonds. As we celebrate the anniversary of that very pink day, we will be rounding the corner to the upcoming wedding date of our fifth and final child.
Wedding Number Five.
Like the tiers in our Wheatridge Dairy wedding cake, our children were married in stair-step order: from oldest to youngest, in the space of the last decade. 10 years ago, our first daughter was married during a crazy season in our family history. Her wedding preparations took place amidst the metaphorical crime scene taped and blood stained carpeted home described in Lost & Found: A Prodigal’s Journey Home. Like so many others, we weathered the storm of storms, nearly broke in half, and instead of hiding it, burying it, and stuffing it way down deep, wrote a book to give hope and courage to parents who are waiting, who are weary and need rest, who long for comfort, who desire strength. I wrote to give them courage in the tender and pursuing love of the Father and to remind them that the heart of Jesus is open wide. He is the finder of lost things. I wrote to make much of God and His redemptive power.
Fast forward ten years, and as we prepare for our youngest daughter’s wedding, life is calm and sweet. There is a slow and ease to our daily routine. The son at the center of the 10-year old wedding/storm collision is redeemed and whole, just like the Graves Into Gardens tattoo now displayed on his shoulder. We are grandparents. Papa is the big cheese and I am Nani to 4 of the most delicious humans ever, and just like a Patsy Cline song, I fall to itty bitty pieces each time I see them. My oldest granddaughter is miraculous and musical and drop-dead funny and her little brother is equal parts sweet and tender. My other two scratchy-voiced grands are slightly milk-chocolate colored, which I take 100% credit for, and I consider it a huge display of self-restraint that I have not taken literal bites out of all four of them.
Like a flashback movie, I now see how much I am experiencing the unfolding of all the years. Years of planting seeds. Watering. Weeding. Watching some seeds sprout green while others lie dormant for a season. Enriching the soil of my own heart along the way. Years of giving our kids an enormous amount of raw spiritual material to work with. Years of serving a long and steady diet of who Jesus is and who we are as a unique family with our own unique family culture. Realizing somewhere along the way that faith, not formula, is how to best walk it all out.
Each of our children’s family culture is growing from the same root. The look and taste of their newly minted marriages feels similar to our own, but each one has taken on their own distinct shape and flavor and identity. They have improved on the original model, like 2.0 versions. My sons are remarkable, very like their handsome dad, and my own daughters are the strongest and most lovely women I know. I had no idea how much I would adore my daughters and sons-in-law and how perfectly they compliment the biggest accomplishments of my life.
Wedding number five is just around the corner. Our baby. She is serving donuts instead of a water fountained tiered cake. I just might tuck a small pink flower in my hair to honor this very last wedding and the very pink day in 1986. Our girl is marrying the most precious young man, raised in a similar garden. Also, his mom is Hispanic, like me, which is why I just might get away with a flower in my hair. Like their siblings before them, may they live in the grace and the sweet, sweet joy that only comes from resting in Him and walking by faith.