you stand together

Can you guess what he's looking for?



He's waiting for Kari, the bride, to come out of the vineyard up onto the hill.



Kari has been one of my sister's great friends since they were in High School and I'll forever remember her coming to our house for sleepovers, doing youth group events together, and being my pseudo-big sister. We were so happy to travel to Virginia to be a part of this beautiful wedding. Watching Kari and Ross during the ceremony and dancing later under a huge white tent, it was easy to see how in love they were.

The wedding matched up perfectly with what I'm reading in Bittersweet,

"Your wedding day will, of course, be an extraordinary day. But on that day, you cannot imagine the beautiful, life-alterning, soul-shaping things ahead of you. This is just the beginning. I know you believe that you could not possibly love him more than you do right now. I understand that. I felt that. I was wrong. I'm not an expert on anything, and certainly not on marriage, but I'm here to tell you that what you feel on your wedding day is like dipping your toe in an ocean, and with every passing year, you swim farther and farther from the shore, unable, at any certain point, to see anything but water. This is just the beginning, and you can't imagine the love that will bloom between you over time."



"Today is about the promise of the future and all the great moments of the past and, indeed, this beautiful present where you stand together, surrounded by people who love you and who are praying that your marriage is one of the great ones. It could be, you know, if you work hard and forgive often, and get over yourself and your selfishness over and over again. It could be one of the stories people tell, when they want to believe in love's power and life's richness. It could be one that your children and grandchildren tell each other praying that somday they'll have a love like yours." -Shauna Neiquist