Love Hard

I love a good wedding.  (sigh)

This weekend I attended a very good wedding.  One of my very good friends got married and I got the joy of celebrating with her and a whole host of amazing people.  For me it was especially fun to see and spend some quality time with people who I don’t often get to see.

It may seem a little weird (until you realize that I went to a small Christian College) but I’ve been to a lot of my close friends weddings and I have a lot more to attend this summer(seriously, a lot!).  I keep thinking I’m a little young to be going to this many weddings and that is partially true.  I really do think that all of the weddings I’m attending and have attended were very much timed perfectly for that couple however, I’ve learned that I’m not ready for a wedding of my own.  I want to be ready, trust me, but I’m still waiting and growing and learning and that’s ok.

I have a couple favorite parts of a wedding.  The first favorite is watching the grooms face when he gets to see his bride walk down the aisle.  It’s awesome to just take in their reaction.  It’s a look of amazing, deep love, emotion, nervousness and joy (most of the time…hopefully!).  My second favorite thing about weddings is when the pastor gets a chance to talk to the couple/family/bridal party at the rehearsal dinner.  I feel as though this is always a little peek into what the sermon for the wedding will be and most of the time I don’t remember the sermon (don’t judge, I usually only retain bits and pieces).  It’s like the shorted version of the message (we can all relate to loving this!)

At Hil and Grant’s wedding the pastor said just a few lines about love at the rehearsal, he later expounded on these thoughts but I didn’t get much past this: Humans are imperfect, human love is imperfect, you will fail, you will fail each other, you will be disappointed, you will disappoint each other.  But, with the example that God has given, your marriage doesn’t rest on imperfection, failure and disappointment it rests on God’s gift of perfect love.

I know this is a wedding message but, since my life is not at that stage, I also took it as a message about relationships in general.  I know that I’m not perfect and I know that those people I’m in relationships with are not perfect either.  That’s just the way it is and luckily we aren’t asked to be perfect.  However this isn’t a free pass to not seek relationships, or mess things up in the relationships we have.  It’s a challenge and a call to imitate perfect love to each other, even when the situations aren’t easy.

One of my favorite quotes is a simple line with two very heavy words: Love Hard.  I think this is a urging to love in a forceful way, but also to love when it is hard to love.

Please don’t think that I’m insinuating that Hil and Grant will have a hard marriage and that they need to ‘Love Hard,’  I know they love each other deeply and I wish them all the happiness in the world.  I just think that every once in a while even us single people in the world need a little marriage sermon.