5 years Ago
Weeks before our wedding five years ago, our priest asked Nicholas and me to share with him some things that we love about each other, separately. He ended up composing our Nuptial Mass homily just reading these notes out loud… and it was quite an unexpected surprise to hear what Nicholas wrote, just minutes before becoming his bride and before all my family and friends. I dug into our memory box this morning to find what we sent and re-read my now husband’s profound words…
His Love for Her
It will not be hard to list the many reasons that lead me to love this woman; in fact, I will list many, but my love for her goes deeper than any list that I can create.
So, here begins the storied love.
I regularly experience a sense of awe when I look at her. God gifted her with a beauty that strikes me in all the different ways that I see her. When she is ready for a ball, when she wears no makeup and does nothing to her hair, when she has just returned from a workout…in these moments her beauty radiates, and I tell her so.
Even since we began dating, she has always reached out to people with a smile and kind words appropriate to the moment. When I barely knew her, we gathered at the grand opening of an ice-skating rink. People, music, performances were everywhere. I left her to use the restroom and when I returned, she was engaged in a deep conversation with an elderly woman. The woman was describing her life and how it changed with the passing of her husband.
She loves children, and she is so good with them. She points them out from a distance, always approaches them to smile and speak to them. She orients where we will sit in places, so that we get a good “baby-view.” I have watched her interact with children, speak to them, enjoy their presence, and she shares with me wisdom about raising children, often teaching me. It is beautiful and humbling to recognize this fact, because I spend all day with children for a living. Within three dates, I knew that she would be an amazing wife and an amazing mother.
Serra Ann exudes femininity. She receives my love with joy, revealing to me my own strength as a man. Her desire to be pursued and protected, to nurture, to make a space within her heart for another, to create a home, to demand respect, and to reach out motherly to the wounded all stoke the warmth in my heart. I am proud of who she is.
She is my gentle prayer warrior, and she constantly calls me to live a deeper relationship with Our Lord. Simply put, no one has ever challenged me to grow in sanctity like she has. A friend is only a friend if they long for you to be the best that you are called to be…reflecting on this fact, I know that she is my best friend.
I can continue with this list, but I must go to the core of my love for her. In three words: I see her. I see the profound gift that she is to the world and to me. I see the infinite depths and mystery of her femininity as God’s daughter; not a mystery that is unknowable or even a mystery to be solved like a puzzle. No, she is a mystery that is infinitely knowable. She is a gift of God’s mercy to me, and I am certain that I am called to abide in this mystery, to pursue her in this mystery, coming to know her evermore for the rest of my life.
Who am I to be gifted this child of God? What more can I do but drop to my knees in gratitude that we have been given to each other to learn what love and communion truly are? The Eternal Father of us all has mercifully gifted me his greatest treasure, one of his daughters, so that I can become Jesus Christ: he who lays down his life for his bride without any conditions, no matter how she responds. TO CHOOSE THE CRUCIFIXION AND EXPERIENCE THE JOY OF THE RESURRECTION. I see her, my bride, who is meant for eternal communion with God, and I am determined in my mission to get her to heaven. I have been given a divine glimpse…I see her. She is more than the sum total of all her qualities, virtues, and talents. My love for her has grown beyond the checklist; I have not chosen her so that she will fulfill an idea that I have or satisfy my desires. I choose to vow my life to her because together we have come to realize that we offer to each other a promise of eternal love that neither of us can fulfill. The Father has given us to each other to bring us back to Him. I see her, and she sees me. It is odd to say, but I love her because she “is.” And we “are” for each other: two broken, weak human beings, aware of the Holy Spirit’s living strength in us to say yes to each other and step into what we do not yet know. Hand in hand, she and I will say yes to learn to love together and slowly be divinely transformed into the man and woman we are called to be. I know that I love her, and I know that I have just begun.
Reflecting Today
I am now wiping tears, amazed again by the whole of this man who I get to call mine.
Each year we talk about how much more we know and love each other since that day. We laugh at how “we barely knew each other” and smile at all we have walked through together so far.
As I re-read Nicholas’ words this time, particularly when he writes, “I see her,” my heart is pierced! I don’t remember this part, and I thank God in this very instant, because a desire to be seen, the need to heal a core wound of not being seen, has been a frequent theme in prayer and therapy for me the past few months…
Honestly, it is hard to see each other in the day-to-day. Amidst the flurry of work and deadlines and trying to be healthy and the intensity of home life with toddlers, etc. etc. etc….the things that “inconvenience” us or irritate us can frustratingly be the stuff that stands out. But oh! Those little slow dances in the kitchen, reassuring glances at a chaotic meal time, reaches for a hand hold in the car, the warm embraces at the end of a long day, these are the “it is so good that you exist” and “I’m so grateful you are mine” seeing moments that keep us in awe of the gift of our marriage.
To be continued!
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wedding photos by Marianne Moore at mariannegreig.com
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