The Start

Today I marry my best friend.

Doesn't that sound ridiculously cliche?

And yet, all the best things in life are, are they not? Originality and uniqueness are overrated. As my sister says, all couples end up saying and doing much the same things - if they don't, they're doing it wrong.

This is philosophical for a wedding day post, you are probably thinking. That's me for you, although I am sure it would be less so if I actually wrote this on my wedding day. I didn't. If I have time then, I will be writing my beloved a letter.

I am getting married. I am excited to have the chance to prove all those terrible jokes wrong. Marriage is good and to be held in high esteem by all. I have resolved never to tell any young person a joke like the three rings of marriage: engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering.

Of course marriage involves suffering. Life involves suffering, and marriage is life at its richest.

I would rather suffer with my beloved than without him. As my dear sister-in-law said when I was beginning this journey with him, this won't really add to the problem. It just gives a face to it. That's how marriage is - it doesn't create problems, it's just really good at revealing them. At showing you your sin.

With my husband - wow, what a weird thing to say, although I have accidentally called him that before - who always so longs to help me walking with me, suffering is easier to bear.

Does this seem heavy for a wedding day?

Why, my little sister asks, do you have to get married? You don't, she says. He can just come over to visit. Why do you want kids? You don't have to have kids.

What is the purpose of marriage? The romantic and sweet are delightful benefits - and essential. We need them. Yet our highest goal in everything must be to honor the Lord.

The undeserved, unwavering, relentless love that Parker has shown me has given me a knowing of God's love that is mind-boggling. Many times I have shaken my head, looked at him, and asked, "Why? I don't understand."

"You're never going to," he says.

And he's right. There are three things that I do not understand, and four that are too wonderful for me. A ship in the sea, a snake on a rock, a bird in the sky, and the way of a man with a virgin. The desire, the devotion, the love are too overwhelming, too strong to be explained by looking at their object. When he sees me, my sin, how I have hurt him, he only loves me more. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it.

I can't wait. I can't wait to be able to be free to be fully united. How wonderful it will be to not have to say goodbye and tear ourselves apart! So long we have been in this strange partial state, me under him, but not quite; our own family, but not yet - how does one live in this state of unity of mind and spirit, and yet not quite reality?

And this is the beauty of marriage: everything is a picture. I wasn't meaning to make a parable, but is this not just our state here, waiting to be fully united with Christ?

I am learning for myself things I have heard. Like marriage gets better with time. And that is perhaps what I anticipate most. Romantic ideals are overrated. The best things are simple, everyday things.

Like cooking a meal for Parker. Like coming home from school and going to my own house. Like arranging the million and one generous gifts we were given in our little kitchen.

God has been good to us, though we are so undeserving. He is faithful, so I know that He will for the rest of our lives. For one way of God showing His amazing, unconditional love for me is through Parker's. Thinking about it, I can't help but smile.

On My Wedding Day

Today is the day, the long awaited.

Today is the last day I wake up before anyone else, marveling at the quiet, dark house, slipping out of my bunk bed quietly lest I wake my sisters. The last that I fall asleep with my little sister's warm body beside me, her arms thrown around my neck. The last that I pull our blankets off the windows so the early morning light can shine in. The last I admire the clean, freshly swept carpet and clean kitchen after we readied for guest.

Last night, I realized I'd miss hearing my dad and little sister laugh at Youtube videos together in the background, as I dried the dishes for my sisters for the last time. We didn't sing, but I thought of how I would miss singing together as we work, knowing and enjoying all the same ridiculous or beautiful songs.

Of course, not all of these things will really be the last time. Many of them will happen again, but it will be with me as a visitor in what right now feels like my own home.

I have been so blessed in my wonderful, crazy family, and only something exciting and amazing would convince me to leave.

Something like Parker, and a life with him.

How strange it is to think that tonight, we'll be married. We'll be able to do things together. The apartment is my home, my base, where I will do everyday things like write and clean and make food. I won't be at my big metal desk, nor in the kitchen where everything's in a logical place. I can't assume that dishes and clothes and food will get done even if I don't help. That is a rather exciting and fun thought, for I will only have things to do for two. That seems ridiculously small.

After school starts, I will not go down back towards Dorr St. and Crissey. I won't ask Dad to take my checks to the bank, nor ask my sisters if we have anything to eat.

But instead, I will go home to Parker.

I am not nervous this morning. Nor am I scared or even sad, despite my thoughts of what I will miss. What I am is hungry from waking up so early and the fact that we're not making pancakes for a while yet.

When I think of what our life and marriage will be like, I am excited and a little somber. I know it's a big thing that I've signed up for, and I have no illusions - well, perhaps I do, but subconsciously - that it will be easy.

But it will be good. Parker is amazing at helping me to grow.

My prayer is that God will bless us with a godly marriage, that we will quickly learn and establish good patterns so that we are able to serve well.

I am excited and happy and waiting. And yet, calm. Everything feels natural, just as I suspected it might, as most things that are right do.

I can't wait to see what God has in store for us.


Apparently that's what it's like if I really write on my wedding day.

The Plans of a Year

Thinking about the happenings of a year, "A man plans his ways, but the Lord directs his steps," always seems so very true. How many plans I had for this year, so many things I wanted to accomplish, and did not. Or did to some degree, but not as I wanted to.

This post is a little late this year; after writing that first paragraph, it took me a rather busy week or so before I got around to attempting to finish it. 

And it's a little easier to do now.

Because, Lord willing, I know a few things I will be doing this year.

A few things I never would have imagined doing a year ago. A few things I never wanted to do before. And a lot of things I've been waiting to do for a long time.

A year ago, I took a walk to see the first sunrise of the year with my sisters and a friend and we carved our initials-PJAM-in the lookout.

Hours before that, a group gathered at our house to ring in the new year by almost missing when the ball dropped and when it turned midnight, with singing Auld Lang Syne, and sharing our resolutions and ways that God had blessed us that year. Two of my siblings were looking forward to getting married.

In that group, close as it was, I did not voice what I really wanted to happen that year.

And when a friend near where I sat on the gray-blue couch said, with more meaning than I knew, he hoped that he would not die as he moved away, I thought little.

I did not know what his moving would mean to me, nor that a year later, we would be sitting in almost the exact same spot at the exact same time.

And that this time, we'd know that this year, we're getting married.

Our first picture after engagement

I never imagined that the boy who read every post I wrote on my blog-even The Day Outside one-would be the subject of one of them. Or that there was any meaning behind that casual Facebook message last May, "Are you still working on that blogging thing?"

And for a month or so, I still thought nothing of it. Because it was just Parker. Just Parker, our family friend, our brother. 

Parker, my friend.

My beloved.

Didn't expect to say that of him this year, or any other.

This year, as I learn every year, I learn that God's plans are so much better than ours. So different from what we wanted...and yet, somehow exactly what we wanted all along.

This year for the first time in a long time, I have made no sort of list of resolutions or goals. But I have perhaps more plans than ever I have had before. Probably none of them will look exactly as I imagine. But that's okay, because His plans for my year are "far beyond anything I could ask or imagine."