Seriously...enough!

When I look back on my wedding day, two reactions hit me at the same time: overwhelming joy and overwhelming...overwhelmth. That apparently isn't a real word, but I like how it sounds, so I'm keeping it in there.

I was determined not to be a bridezilla. I prided myself on how patient and joyous I was being as the months (all five of them) ticked by, keeping me busy with preparation but heavily blessed with help from Bryan and many friends and family members. Everything was going off without a hitch (as the hitch wouldn't be happening until the actual wedding day).

On January 3, I stood in my gown, surrounded by my beautiful bridesmaids and soon-to-be sisters-in-law. A clear blue sky and crisp white snow lay outside the window of the Sunday School room where we'd been getting ready. Soon, the music started up and, one-by-one, everyone but me filed out of the room and into the hushed sanctuary. When my turn arrived, I could hardly wait to poke my head around the corner of the sanctuary's double doors and see my groom smiling at me! When our eyes met for the first time, I was taken aback by the pure joy I saw on his face. I smiled back at him, fighting a lump in the back of my throat. This is it! I thought to myself.

Rewind about twenty-four hours. I was not wearing my beautiful white dress. I was wearing faded old blue jeans, my blood pressure was through the roof, and I was throwing a garbage bag full of pew decorations with angry tears streaming down my face. I ran into a hidden corner of the church and cried...it was the day before my wedding, and the weather forecast had been correct. Outside was raging the biggest blizzard Frontier had seen in over a decade, and Bryan's family and our rehearsal guests were on the road. It was uncertain when, or if, they would arrive. Certainly not on time to have our rehearsal supper at the planned time!

Rewind about twenty-four hours from there. Bryan and I were driving down to Frontier from Saskatoon, and even then the weather was so bad we barely made it down. I thought I was going to get an ulcer.

Rewind about forty-eight hours from there. The groom and groomsmen vests arrive at Moore's just in time for the wedding, and Bryan discovers that his vest is way too small. And we have two more days to order one in from Toronto. And they mixed up all the groomsmen vest sizes, so we didn't know if they would even fit the guys. We would just have to hope for the best when we got to Frontier for those ones...thankfully, however, Moore's got in the right-sized vest for Bryan the day we drove down to Frontier. That was one time the steam coming out of my ears was halted momentarily.

Rewind about forty-eight hours from that point. On one of my last days of work, when I had just finished doing orientation with a new employee who was going to make my weeks off SO much easier on my team in my absence, this new employee calls me at home in the evening to quit due to health issues. I was very understanding and calm on the phone, but when I hung up, I cried great, heaving sobs. I thought I'd have to re-do about two weeks of work and preparation in only one day now, when I was already so stressed because of the weather forecast on my wedding date, and emotional over some people who'd called to say they wouldn't be able to come to our wedding anymore. However, when I called my coordinator, she made it very clear that she would take care of it and I should just focus on my wedding. Still, I somehow felt guilty that she'd have so much quick juggling to do, and I wouldn't be able to do much to help.

Rewind about a week before that. Our car was going in for its second major repair within a month...and this stupid thing was supposed to take us down to San Francisco for our honeymoon! (Thankfully Jannaya had offered to let us take her car if ours wasn't fixed. That was VERY generous.) We got our fixed-up car and attended Nick and Aubree's wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony...then Bryan and I went to a walk-in clinic to see about these funny red spots that had been slowly spreading all over my neck, arms, legs, and torso.

The doctor told me I had ringworm.

I mean, seriously...who gets ringworm all over her body a week before her wedding? Seriously? Who does that? I started to panic that I'd be too contagious for Bryan to even touch me...what kind of honeymoon would that be?

The doctor was very businesslike as he told me it would probably go away in a couple of weeks. Then my face crumpled and tears sprang from my eyes and I nearly wailed, "But I'm getting married next weekend!" Immediately, he donned an encouraging smile and his eyes became very kind as he said, "Or -- or maybe only a few days." He then proceeded to ask me questions about my wedding, no doubt to try and get my mind off of this crappy news. Bless his heart for trying.

So yeah...up until the week or two before my wedding, I avoided being bridezilla. Then I tried to keep all my anger inside as these stresses suddenly mounted within such a short period of time. I thought bridezilla was fairly contained...even the throwing of the pew decorations was fairly tame, I figured, when factoring in the growing swarm of killer bees inside my whole body. I seriously felt like I was going to explode.

Back to the day before my wedding...we had just finished decorating the church. It looked SO beautiful...the sanctuary for the ceremony, and the basement for the reception. But as Bryan and I stood in the middle of it all, quietly taking in all the hard work that we and others had put in to make it so special, I had an empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sure, we would get married tomorrow, and I knew that was the most important part of the day. But it was hard to swallow the idea that I might have to lose the dream of sharing that day with a room full of family and friends. Outside, the wind was still howling and the visibility was still poor. And it was growing dark.

We headed back to my house. None of our rehearsal guests had arrived in Frontier yet. We'd been taking phone calls all day from people so we could know they were safe. Then the phone rang again, and it was all of our musicians, plus most of Bryan's groomsmen, calling to tell us they'd been storm-stayed in Shaunavon. It was a good move to stay there and be safe, of course. But I felt something snap inside of me when I hung up the phone. Bryan stood there with a question in his eyes, so I relayed the message to him; half of our rehearsal guests wouldn't be coming today. Tomorrow we'd have to wing it. Tonight, he wouldn't have any of his groomsmen to celebrate his last night of bachelorhood with.

"Well, it's going to be okay, because--" Bryan started.

"IT'S NOT GOING TO BE OKAY!" I shouted at him, surprising even myself. I had never yelled at Bryan, or any other person, in my whole adult life.

The look on his face...the shock, the anger, the hurt, the embarrassment (my whole family was around)...was all the punishment I needed. Right away I tried to backpedal, but it would be an hour or so before we could talk to each other normally. I apologized profusely. We drove to the church for our happy little wedding rehearsal, and the car was thick with tension. I mean, seriously...who yells at her fiance right before their wedding rehearsal? It was supposed to be a happy, carefree, lovey-dovey time! Thankfully, Bryan found it in himself to forgive me quite quickly. He said, "I didn't want to stand up on our wedding day and say our vows to each other while I still felt angry, so it's forgiven." And he was sincere. He even said it with a happy smile and a sparkle in his eye, like he truly didn't have a care in the world.

And on January 3, after I'd made my walk up the aisle and Bryan and I were standing in front of the full church together, we sang songs to God about how great He is and how faithful He is...and I had so much apologizing to do to Him for how I'd railed against His judgment for allowing all of these stresses to happen before our wedding. And yet, each stress had been taken care of. Even the weather had cooperated on our big day. None of our guests had hit the ditch on their way here, which was a miracle in and of itself! As I stood there praising God, I felt sheepish for my recent past...yet God impressed upon my heart how much joy He was taking in this moment, and how I should be soaking it in, too, without guilt. He knew my heart was repentant and worshipful, and that it was time to rejoice! What a loving Father!

Oh yeah, and it ended up not being ringworm. A few weeks after our honeymoon, I found out that it was this weird, rare rash that comes and goes on its own, and doesn't spread to other people. I guess I'd already figured out that it doesn't spread, cause Bryan never got it...

Necklace

I'm really excited about this post! I've been taking a Bible study course, along with many women from Rock of Ages church, and it's been getting me to read Scripture a lot more than I do on a regular basis. Already, I've been very blessed by the ways God has spoken to me through verses that almost felt dry, I had them so memorized. It's amazing how He can make anything new, even tired old words that our minds automatically file away as "old news."

Anyway, tonight He made me a necklace. I was thinking back on how afraid I used to be...how my Christian walk, and as a result my whole life, was based on fear until I went to CLBI, because I was under a constant cloud of condemnation. Satan knew that my belief in God wouldn't be shaken, so He lied to me about God's love instead, making me believe with ALL of my heart that God would just as soon strike me with a lightning bolt as let me live. I felt shaky, uncertain, and even so afraid of hell that I couldn't sleep at nights. And then God, through a series of events, broke through my wall of fear until it crumbled away completely one night at a CLBI worship event. I haven't been the same since...my life is no longer defined by fear, and I sense God's love for me every day, everywhere I go. It's a blessing I never even dreamed of experiencing!

So after going through the Bible study questions tonight, I journaled a couple of verses that had stood out to me, and suddenly my head exploded with verse after verse in chronological order of my walk with Christ up until now, and I couldn't write fast enough! I'm not a super Christian who had them memorized word-for-word, but I had enough of a gist of them that I strung them together and it made me think of a special necklace from God for me. (What can I say...I'm a girl, I love jewelry!)

Here are the verses in my necklace!

1 John 4:16-19: "And so we know and rely" (interruption here...isn't "rely" a neat word in this phrase?) "on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment," (another interruption here...wow! Confidence on the day of judgment! That's huge!) "because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because God first loved us."

This one applies because I SO lived in fear before...and God's perfect love cast it out, once and for all!

Romans 8: 15-16: "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, 'Abba, Father.' The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

Again, fear is not designed to be part of a real relationship with God...and now, although emotional moments can sometimes throw off my compass, underneath it all I have full confidence of the Spirit testifying with mine that I am God's beloved child!

Ezekiel 36:26: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh."

When I think "heart of stone", I generally think of one that is hardened from bitterness and anger. But my heart was definitely a stone before God, as well. It was scared stiff. God alone (I can't take any credit for it) removed that old way of existing from me, and gave me a new way that continues to amaze me, even years after the real change happened! And now I am growing, like flesh, as opposed to the immobility and stagnancy of having a heart of stone.

Isaiah 41: 18: "I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs."

Once God had given me a heart of flesh, free from fear, the outpouring of His love and presence and joy into my life was unbelievable! This verse is the best metaphor I've ever found for how God took my empty, fearful soul and turned it into something crazily blessed by the love it had longed for all its life!

And finally, Philippians 1:6: "...being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

That one's fairly self-explanatory and, thankfully, it applies to every single person who lives in relationship with Christ... no matter where you're at, how confident you are of His love for you, or how fearfully you may still be living, He is NOT finished with you...not by a long shot! And He never will be. Even after we leave this earth, we have all of eternity to live in worship and grow closer and closer to Jesus! No matter what happens in life, that is a beautiful and certain hope that we can fall back onto, like the biggest and best bean bag chair ever. God is good!