it matters

We were all a bit jet lagged from our red eye on Wednesday night, but I rolled out of bed and decided to head out for a run. I started to head south on Folly Beach to see what I could find and went as far as I could go on the island that direction.  I then turned around and headed as far as I could the other direction north.  The route turned out to be a bit longer than I expected, but at least I knocked out my long run for the weekend. :) 

where the sidewalk ends... (the end of Folly Island to the south) 

wearing the same running shoes I wore in the marathon this summer- it seems so fitting as this weekend seems to have all sorts of running and race analogies tied up with it... 

love the blue dot showing me where I was at the end of the island. 

I came across a bunch of starfish at some point on my run and threw one back in the ocean for good measure in honor of this quote: 

“Once upon a time, there was a wise man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing. He had a habit of walking on the beach before he began his work.

One day, as he was walking along the shore, he looked down the beach and saw a human figure moving like a dancer. He smiled to himself at the thought of someone who would dance to the day, and so, he walked faster to catch up.

As he got closer, he noticed that the figure was that of a young man, and that what he was doing was not dancing at all. The young man was reaching down to the shore, picking up small objects, and throwing them into the ocean.

He came closer still and called out "Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?"

The young man paused, looked up, and replied "Throwing starfish into the ocean."

"I must ask, then, why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?" asked the somewhat startled wise man.

To this, the young man replied, "The sun is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them in, they'll die."

Upon hearing this, the wise man commented, "But, young man, do you not realize that there are miles and miles of beach and there are starfish all along every mile? You can't possibly make a difference!"

At this, the young man bent down, picked up yet another starfish, and threw it into the ocean. As it met the water, he said, 
"It made a difference for that one.” 
― Loren Eiseley

So in light of that quote that came to mind, 

I was thinking about your marriage and praying for you all. 

May you know that the love you pour out for one another matters. 

Everyday, may you find little ways and small ways to infuse joy into one another's lives and may you know that it matters.... 

Every little thing you do to show love and to serve one another matters. 

Giving thanks for the gift of being here at Folly Beach with you all!!! 

just two more sleeps until the big day!!

let the celebrations BEGIN!!! 

jumping in an outdoor pool on March 12... 

Thank you all so much for this sweet spot!! 

we love you all so! 

here we come!!!

Whoohoo!!! so excited to come celebrate with you!! 

radiant joy

19 The heavens are telling the glory of God; they are a marvelous display of his craftsmanship. 2 Day and night they keep on telling about God. 3-4 Without a sound or word, silent in the skies, their message reaches out to all the world. The sun lives in the heavens where God placed it 5 and moves out across the skies as radiant as a bridegroom going to his wedding,* or as joyous as an athlete looking forward to a race! (Psalm 19: 1-5) 

praying for radiant joy to abound this week.... 

and praying for a glorious South Carolina sunrise on Saturday morning.... 

A blessing for your week to come

I read this chapter out of a book called Bittersweet when I was in India last August/September and have been saving it until this week to send to you.... It is a letter written to a bride from one friend to another. You will probably recognize some of the phrases that I've taken from this and inserted in your wedding message, but here it is in full.  

Praying for God to show amazing grace and glory in the week to come... 

and a few words to share written on the door at a friend's house 

A Blessing for a Bride 

People refer to your wedding day as the best day of your life. I understand why entirely. I remember my wedding day so absolutely clearly. I remember putting on the veil, seeing Aaron’s face for the first time, the heaviness of my dress as I walked down the aisle with my dad. I remember the taste of the champagne and the sound of the band. I remember dancing with Aaron as though it was last night, and it was nearly eight years ago.

This is the thing, though: When people tell you that your wedding day is the best day of your life, what it sort of sounds like they’re saying is that it’s all downhill after the wedding is over. So many pastors make it a point to tell you, right during the ceremony, that it’s all fun and games while you’re wearing the dress and holding the flowers, but that serious business starts when the dancing stops. That’s true, in some ways. Marriage is a serious business, and there’s a lot to marriage that you can’t see from where you’re standing in the front of a church, bridesmaids surrounding you.

Your wedding day will, of course, be an extraordinary day. But on that day, you cannot imagine the beautiful, life-altering, 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 a 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.

You will cry together, laugh together, pray and dance and move furniture together. You will learn and unlearn things, make a home together, hurt each other’s feelings without meaning to, and sometimes very much on purpose. You will learn over time that the heart of marriage is forgiveness. You will learn in the first six months how much forgiveness he requires, and then you will realize, in the six months after that, just how much forgiveness you yourself need.

A piece of practical advice: you will not sleep well the night before your wedding. It’s pretty much a fact. Your mind will rattle and shake, full of bizarre fears. You fear that your dress will fall off. It will not. You fear that you did not, in fact, secure a caterer. You did. You will fear, with each passing hour of the night, that your face is puffing up like a sausage and the area under your eyes is becoming blacker than an eight ball. This is not true. You are young, and a good makeup artist can cover a multitude of sins. Wake up a bridesmaid or your mother, make some tea, and let them remind you about the important things: the florist will indeed show up, your crazy uncle probably will hit on your bridesmaids, but they’ll play it off graciously, and most important, you are indeed ready to be a wife.

Part of being a married couple means that you create a new identity together, woven from your experiences and histories and lives. Work hard to become your own family, with your own values and traditions, things you always do, things you never do, things that bring you back to why you fell in love in the first place. Dance to your song in the backyard, wear your wedding shoes every anniversary. Carve out your own history together, little by little, month by month, year by year. Because there will be seasons that are as dry as deserts, and the history of your love for one another will be the water you need to bring new life and growth, turning that season from dust to garden once again.

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 someday they’ll have a love like yours.

My grandparents celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary this year. They are one of those couples that are living a love story every day, even after sixty years. They went to third grade together, and then Grandma’s family moved away. And when they met again at seventeen, Grandpa swears he remembered that beautiful face from the third grade. They were married at the Justice of the Peace, just before Grandpa left for the Navy. They moved to Hawaii a few years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Life took them to California for a few years, and then back home to Michigan. At their house in Kalamazoo, Grandpa worked in his shop while Grandma tended her roses, all along the white fence. We watched them slow dance in the kitchen and loved to look through their pictures from Hawaii and their sailing trips. They love to ride bikes together, and for their seventy-fifth birthdays, they took their tandem recumbent bike to Washington, DC, to ride along the Potomac.

On the night of their anniversary party, we had dinner and cake and when we toasted them, essentially, we all said the same thing. We each said our own versions of thank you for having a marriage that gives us something extraordinary to aspire to. Thank you for all the times we caught you kissing in the kitchen and all the times you showed us pictures of your wedding and your years in Hawaii and your sailing trips and bike rides. Thank you for giving us a picture of how we could be, if we work really hard and are very good to one another. Thank you for living with so much love and tenderness and laughter that we have in you a real life picture of how good it can be.

You, my dear friend, will be a bride for one day, but you will, with God’s grace and your own very hard work, be a wife to this man every day for the rest of your life. Being a bride is super-fun, but it pales in comparison to the thrill and beauty of being a part of one of the truly great partnerships, like my grandparents. Make your love story one worth telling. Make it one worth living, every day, as long as you both shall live.

*An excerpt taken from  Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist 

Two More Weeks!

As you all have just two weeks until your wedding, I wanted to share this with you and to remind you that we are cheering for you! 

If you want more vistas of joy in your marriage, what’s your training program? What does it take? How can you chart a path that will prepare you? How will you train? Where are you already strong? Where are your areas of weakness? How will you deal with setbacks? How will you nourish your body, mind, heart and soul to meet the challenge? Who will you train with? Who will inspire you? Support you?

Whether you seek to run a marathon, climb a mountain, be an accomplished musician or revel in the joy of an intimate loving relationship … it will require a daily dose of intentional thought and action. This is what makes loving a spiritual practice. Daily loving intention … the art of appreciating and sustaining joy.

http://blog.tinaschermersellers.com/2011/07/05/when-love-is-a-breathtaking-vista/

countdown!

hope you can hear the cheers from Seattle!!!!