At age four, on any given Saturday morning, chances are you would have found me at my Grandma Wilma’s house, sitting in front of the television having a quick snack before 10:30am so that my lunch would not be ruined. That was the rule, the one and only rule about snacks at Grandma’s house. Once finished with my regular ice cream sandwich or my Dixie cup of shredded cheese, Grandma would clean my mess up and start cooking, encouraging me to go play until she called me to supper. I would take off from the living room, run down the hall, and turn left to enter the guest bedroom. Sliding across the floor, I would reach the dresser drawers. The next to the bottom drawer held exactly what I was looking for: Grandma’s old, white slips. They were not slips to me, though. No, they were so much more. They were wedding gowns. I shed my clothes, hurried into the slip, and forced Mack to become the groom or flower girl, whatever I was feeling and whatever she could handle that day. I mean, she was only two years old. I wanted to be a bride, I wanted to plan a wedding, and I wanted to get married every single Saturday morning before I was called to supper. I simply loved being the bride.
On cold days, the wedding celebration took place inside. The hallway became my aisle and the den became the stage area. If lunch were simple to prepare that day, Grandma came to enjoy the show. On beautiful, summer days, Mack and I would venture outside to get married underneath the large, knotted shade tree in the backyard or on the hill in the front lawn overlooking the wheat and alfalfa fields. If Dad were around the farm at the time, he would come walk me down the aisle or fill in the spot I was most worried about that day. It never got old. I would do something different each time just to decide what I would like better when the actual day would finally arrive, when I would be the bride.
From around age four to age seven, if you asked me whom I was going to marry, I would answer with three answers: my daddy, Aladdin, or the man at the grocery store who snuck candy out to me while mom loaded the groceries into the car. I always gave the same three as my answer. I knew I needed to keep my options open, especially when my mother would giggle and tell me all three were impossible. I just thought she did not understand the love I held for each of the three people. Surely one of the three would work out, right?
In sixth grade, I had a brilliant idea to play “wedding” at recess. Yes, I basically forced all thirty-two sixth-graders and the few fifth-graders that played with us to have a fake wedding celebration. We prepared and planned all week. Then, come Friday, everything was ready and the entire playground came to watch. Who was the bride? Me. They let me be the bride since it was my idea. I am pretty sure we planned on having a wedding every Friday for the rest of the school year, though, because everyone wanted to be the bride. I was okay with this, of course, because I loved weddings. I loved them. However, our principal did not like our weddings after our first one. So, we had to quit having our wedding festivities. What a shame.
A few years later, in junior high, on a random Wednesday night, our youth pastor shuffled all the youth down to the sanctuary for our object lesson. We needed object lessons desperately. Bless his heart; none of us could pay attention at that age, even when we tried. So, Trevor and his beautiful wife, Aimee, took us down the hall to the sanctuary for our Wednesday night lesson. Unfortunately, I do not remember the lesson. (Sorry, Trevor!) I do remember the object part of the lesson, though. We all sat down in the front pews and Trevor asked for a volunteer. Everyone sat shyly. Then Trevor elaborated on his request.
“Who is the craziest about weddings?”
No one said anything, but I started to get really nervous and hot.
“Girls, come on, one of you has to always be talking about your future wedding.”
I kept my eyes right on my feet. I could feel people looking at me. I knew I was beginning to sweat.
Yup. Exactly what I knew would happen. I glanced up to find about twenty fingers pointing directly at me.
“Alright, alright, I’ll volunteer.”
In eighth grade, it was not cool to like weddings. Boys were still considered “gross” and you did not ever think nor talk about getting married. I was weird; I knew it. I had almost everything planned. It was picture perfect. The only thing I was missing was the groom.
On May 1, 2011, I met a guy who was probably just as crazy about being married as I was. I did not know that then, because if there is a less perfect time to talk about marriage and weddings than in junior high, it is during college. Most boys run from the smallest mention of commitment. You do not mention marriage, especially once you have and it does not work out for you. However, after a few months of time with this man, I realized he was just that: a man. He proposed on October 17, 2012, and I was living my childhood dream: planning a wedding.
Wedding planning is probably difficult no matter when you have to do it, but I can assure you it is even more difficult than normal when you are going to school full-time. It was a constant battle of deciding between schoolwork or wedding preparations. Both took great hits. Thank the Lord for my mother for taking my little bits of visions that I did give her and stringing them together to make them a reality.
After seven and a half months, the day had arrived. I woke up on May 31, 2013, spent time with Jesus, and began to prep, for I was finally the bride. All the while, my phone is constantly reminding me of two things: it is my wedding day and Oklahoma is in a tornado warning. My hair was put up, my make-up put on perfectly, and I finally was put in the dress I had envisioned wearing since I was four years old. The day was looking ever so lovely.
Whispers filled the air for most of the afternoon. I knew what was going on, even though no one wanted me to. Thanks to social media, I was again fully aware of our weather situation and that this was my one and only day to be a bride, not the loveliest of combinations. Yet, it was happening. There was no stopping and starting over.
Right about the time we were supposed to be walking down the aisle, I was being walked down the stairs to take shelter from the rapidly approaching tornado. Every bride pictures that moment of the double doors being opened as she begins her walk down the aisle and the crowd's breath being taken away by her beauty. My crowd slowly walked by a bathroom, where I was sitting in the middle of the floor in my gorgeous, white gown, and gasped with complete disbelief and terror because of what was happening......Close, but not quite.
After having the scare of our lives, we were able to run back upstairs once the storm passed to have a speedy ceremony. The ceremony I had practiced since I was young and perfected for the last seven and a half months was squished into fifteen minutes. I ran down and back up the aisle quicker than I had ever imagined, even in the wedding nightmares I had prior to the evening. I had to change back into the clothes I had gotten ready in earlier that day so my dress would not be damaged any more than it already was, and was thrown out into a torrential downpour and flood without any supper. That was it. That was my wedding, everything I had looked forward to and longed for.
The next few days, weeks, and months led to one question, a question that always comes up when life happens a way that we did not plan: Why?
I should have shared at the beginning why marriage was always so beautiful and intriguing to me, but it just happens to be the reason, the answer to the question. You see, history opens with a wedding in Genesis and it will end with one, too. Marriage points to something else, something greater, and someone even more beautiful. It points to Christ.
“Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” (Ephesians 5:22-33)
Jesus gave Himself up for the church, for His body. He came to earth, died for our sins, and was raised from the dead, claiming victory over sin and death. Those who give their lives to Him and trust in Him for their salvation are apart of that body. We are His church, His bride. How amazing is this passage when you look at it in that light! Christ gave Himself up for me; He cleanses me and presents me as radiant, without stain, wrinkle, and blemish. He presents me holy. I am apart of the spotless Bride. In return, my life is supposed to be a continuous, joyous submission to Him, seeking His glory.
This is why weddings and marriage have always captivated my attention. God put that desire and interest in my heart so that I would constantly be pointed to Him, to the incredible relationship that earthly marriage echoes: Christ and the church. This is why our wedding was not and our marriage is not perfect, it is only a picture of something more. It is only a glimpse of perfection.
Grandma’s cooking is remarkable and my Aunt Dana and Mum worked hard to put together food for the wedding reception, but I can assure you it will not be as good as the party after the wedding that is to come. My four year-old fantasies and the actual tragedy of my earthly wedding will not even compare to the Marriage of the Lamb. They are only pictures of what is to come. So, I will continue to look forward to, long for, and ready myself as part of the Bride until I am called to supper, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.
“Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out:
'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.'” (Revelation 19:6-8)
“They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” (Revelation 22:4)
“He’s coming back for His bride! Hallelujah!”
