What a beautiful event I have just returned from! Two good friends just got married this morning at my home church and I couldn't help but smile at what I saw and tear up at what I heard. It was a long engagement for this couple and part of it was spend apart with him oversees serving our country and so this day was such a joyful one for them and all their connections. My favorite part of weddings (now that I've been to quite a few, with older siblings and cousins during my younger years and my very own friends these days) is watching the groom as the bride walks down.
The pastor, a former youth pastor for us back in high school, married them and I won't forget his message. Well there were a few but especially this; he said that both people came together in this marriage already complete and whole people and they knew who they were in God. So that now, their love could be so real and true and genuine because neither of them will need to find something in one another but their relationship is a wonderful gift from God for their betterment. I find it to be so true that when people are content and love themselves they can bring much more to another person and that relationship because they aren't looking selfishly for more or are in need of certain things to help their self-esteem. This is not to say however that their love is less intense, passionate or exciting and the pastor also reminded them of this as well; that even with their Earnest personalities they must remember to love with "reckless abandonment" and to not buy into the saying that love grows dimmer as the couple ages in marriage. He claimed quite the opposite actually.
I recently was reading a sermon on a similar idea of love. He (the minister) poses the question of how should love be dispensed? should it be frugally, cautiously, wisely, or sparingly? No, true love is wasteful and impractical. He made the correlation of this with the story (Mark 14) of Mary pouring the entire bottle of perfume on Jesus' feet. The other disciples and people he was eating with didn't understand her at all and immediately began criticizing her before Jesus and then Jesus tells them this, "Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor will always be with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body before to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her."
I found myself thinking anthropologically as I sat there witnessing this marriage service take place. I was becoming overwhelmed with thankfulness for the culture I am apart of and the customs and traditions we uphold; like this occasion of marriage for example. I think it is such a blessing we have to make marriage such a public and formal event to not only give the couple attention and honor but also for the betterment of the community itself-to remind those who are in attendance of the important things in life to uphold and respect and be in awe of. I thought how this service is an example of my American culture (as well as many others in their varying styles and customs) and in turn demonstrates some of my culture's values and traditions.
Interestingly too in a conversation with someone afterwards, this idea of comparing our culture with others came up. She was merely saying how she has been able to become content and happy "living at home still" as an adult. And what helped her get to this point she told me was the realization from study of other parts of the world that she would be looked at as quite the norm everywhere else, where people live with their families for years and years. She said it is only in this country or culture that you have people looking at you like you're weird when you end up living close to your own kin. I was happy for her and to see another example of how thinking anthropologically is so healthy!
As my post title says...turning a new page...this is kind of the second part. First it was my friends' marriage as a page being turned in their life and now I will share what page my life has turned from and where I see it heading.
This is the beginning of an entry on April 22, 2008.
"I can do it. I do have control over my life. I will go to class. I will go to work. I will "fake it to make it" ... I will accept the consequences of my previous behavior and choices made when depressed... I will be careful not to have higher expectations than is reasonable and appropriate. I do have ability to turn my attitude away from the comforting darkness.
I am strong. I will get better."
I'm still looking back at this last year and semester, smiling, as it was so much of a fight for survival which turned into so much more! I wanted to share for a change one of the positive/uplifting voices I have and hope it can reveal an honest face-value look at someone (quite ordinary and much like others out there) treating and getting better from depression and anxiety or any other mental disorder or illness.
I've been feeling what it is like to live a stable, functioning, life for months on end now and it has been incredible and very rewarding and fulfilling. So far this summer I have intensely job searched, gone on a roadtrip with my boyfriend and friends to Acadia NP in Maine for a week, Job searched some more, visited my boyfriend at his home before he left for a cross-the-country roadtrip, job searched a more...and now (finally) work through a temp agency and do clerical and filing work and also give swim lessons on the side. Working about 40 hours a week keeping me busy but still enough time for checking out 11 books at the library.
I love Summer Life. I really think i'm built for it. Work is good and mindless so i'm not stressed, then evenings spent curled up on a couch reading a good book or watching a movie with a friend (namely my other half, Kate Laramie).
The most exciting thing recently has been my sister and her daughter "Josie" the walking, getting into everything toddler visiting these next two weeks!
The second most exciting this is my plan to order a hammock stand so i can set up my belize hammock in our yard and lounge there all the time!!!
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