“I’ll call the new minister and make sure he can do your wedding.” Life is full of changes. And, because of this, the most important character trait we are trying to teach our daughter is resiliency. However, what is it about weddings that take this to a whole new level? If Murphy’s Law is that things that can go wrong, will go wrong… then the wedding addendum must be, ‘and it will happen two days before the ceremony.’ Take my wedding. Our florist completely changed her price quote on us two weeks before the wedding. We fired her, but try finding a good florist with that little notice? And the day after I drove up to Seattle to do a test run of my hair style, the salon called me to tell me the hairdresser had quit and moved to a new salon. Resiliency brought me through these hiccups. But, when we lost our third priest just days before the wedding date, I had to question what God was trying to tell us. With 8 months to go, our first priest was moved to a new parish. I was disappointed but knew we would be fine. The second priest we had arranged then had a retreat that he (and all the other Jesuits in the area) had to attend during our wedding date. This was much more concerning as it felt like we were out of time and options. Finally, the church found a non-Jesuit priest to marry us. I breathed a sigh of relief, until just three days before the wedding our thirst priest was called to Rome for a special meeting with the Pope. Now really… what are the chances? Of course the message was all about faith and control (two things with which I struggle). I had to hand it over, knowing that if they got a new priest it would be someone who neither knew us nor probably cared much. I turned out to be very much wrong. The new priest arranged to meet us for lunch the very next day. He spent some time getting to know us…and then had the humor to help execute a very funny joke on my husband during the ceremony rehearsal (we switched the readings to one my husband knew we didn’t want… If you’d like to find out which reading which readings we switched you can read my new book, UNTANGLING THE KNOT, due out on Feb. 13th:>) No matter how we might try, weddings, like married life, are messy. Things don’t always go as planned and everything is up for change. But, as I learned during my own mishaps, sometimes it is in these moments that we experience the true meaning of love and God.
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“But what if I don’t like my teacher?”
Raise your hand if you remember that feeling… you know, the one you would get right before school started back up after summer vacation? We’ve been having this discussion a lot in my house lately. And, it is tough not to laugh when my daughter explains that she is scared she won’t have any friends in class… won’t get a good teacher… won’t be smart enough to do the work. I try to explain that every summer for as long as there has been school with summer vacation, kids have felt the exact same as her at this point in the year. In my last blog post I wrote about change. Having this chance to observe my daughter has pointed out something to me. Since change is inevitable, and since there will always be some measure of fear that goes with it… fear must be inevitable too. Perhaps this is obvious to others, but for me this is an epiphany. Not liking the feelings that fear creates I have worked throughout my life to fight it. I have believed if I were simply stronger, more secure, more stable, more…. something, I could avoid having to experience these feelings of fear. Now I see that no matter how much I might try to control myself and my environment fear is part of life. So, what can I do about it? Well, that is why I wanted to laugh at my daughter’s anxiety about going back to school. Although those are very real concerns, there’s actually nothing she can do about them until she sees how it plays out. She can’t actually not go to school (as was her suggestion). She has to simply live it out. Writing is a scary business, filled with what-ifs and self-doubt. And, unlike school, writers can, and some do, decide to avoid it by just not writing. But it shouldn’t stop us. Because even though writing may be scary, it also gives me something to do while I worry about whether my daughter will like her new teacher in school this year. |
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June 2020
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