Right now, I'm Loving...

Here's something to start your week off right. C.S. Lewis (novelist, poet, Christian apologist and great friends with J.R.R. Tolkien) rocks.

C.S. Lewis is most famous for his Chronicles of Narnia series, but he wrote all sorts of profound stuff. The cartoon above is taken from a quote in his book, The Four Loves. Here's the quote in its entirety: 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”

Death By Formalwear... Remembering My Wedding

Fifteen years ago today I married my wonderful husband.   Anybody who knows the two of us will tell you: he definitely got the short end of that stick. Even my own parents would tell you that. Especially my own parents.  And they’d be right.

I don’t remember too much about my wedding day. I got married in Savannah, GA in May in an old church. Which was great and beautiful and atmospheric... until the air conditioning broke in the church on the morning of my wedding. So there I was in my long-sleeve wedding gown, sweating profusely, in front of a couple hundred of our closest friends and family.

About 10 minutes into the ceremony, my maid of honor handed me a handkerchief so I could mop the sweat dripping down my face dot my brow.  Upon seeing me bring a handkerchief to my eyes, the preacher, who had known me since I was a baby, thought I was crying, so he started crying. He could barely get through the rest of the service he was so overwhelmed with emotion.  Everybody thought it was sweet and wonderful.

Except me, who was too busy praying that God would intervene with a freak May blizzard or something.

A good friend – the one who introduced hubby and I – played guitar and sang during the lighting of the candles in the middle of our wedding.  People came up to me during the reception and said they loved how Kevin and I were saying words of love to one another as our mothers lit the candles.  In truth, our conversation was more like this:

“I think I might die, I’m so hot.”

“Me too. Just hang on a bit longer and we’ll get out of here.”

Maybe not true romance, but still true love.

Ends up almost no one else in the church even noticed it was hot. Of course, nobody else was wearing 18 layers of whatever-that-material-is-called under a wedding gown.  Or a three-piece suit, like poor hubby. 

But we made it. And we’re still making it. Although we haven’t faced anything as treacherous as death-by-formalwear-in-a-smoldering-church in quite a while.

And if I look a little shimmery in my wedding photos, that’s bridal glow, not dried sweat.