This weekend, we celebrated the wedding of my baby sister (Emma) and her husband, my now-brother Sean. Not only was I able to celebrate with extended family who flew in from all corners of the country, but I was privileged to read something I wrote at the ceremony, and take a few pictures of the beautiful couple after their vows.
Here is what I said, only a snippet of all the words I could have penned (typed?) to capture their love and talent and adventure and beauty:
Emma and Sean’s love is ordinary, I suppose. More beer and pizza than champagne and caviar. And this, of course, is what makes it so extraordinary. In a world prone to shouting ever-louder and always clamoring for more, there is beauty in the small quiet life lived hand-in-hand. In the not-small brave act of moving all the way across the country alone, together.
Emma and Sean are beautiful people, both of them, particularly the way they live out their giftings into precisely how they have been shaped. They spill that beauty and life onto all those who are lucky enough to cross their paths. They make each other better, reflecting beauty back and forth in dazzling arrays. The lines worn in the kitchen tell of their dance, of the myriad twinings of their lives. They have lived enough life together by now to know all the ways that wisdom and love can be most often found in sharing food across the table, breaking bread together, sharing bites of heaven.
Emma and Sean: my prayer for your lives and your marriage is that when the world flattens you (and it will, it always does), you will know all the ways the pounding and kneading makes you stronger, lighter, and even, daresay, more delicious. That when you struggle under the weight of becoming, you will always let forgiveness and light do their mysterious work of rising. That you will know all the ways the world is full of Great Suffering and Great Love, not either/or but both/and. That your hearts will bind tighter together with every heartache and each joy.
May you know the holy gift of simple presence. Of sitting quiet together or eating pizza and drinking beer together, through all the deepest pains and greatest triumphs that life brings your way. May your family circle grow ever-wider, and the paths you blaze bring you ever-closer to home, wherever that may be. May you always bring out the best in each other, and even when you dont, may you love each other just as fiercely for it.
