love and respect

On Saturday we had the joy and privilege of attendant the most beautiful wedding.  I love weddings, like, a lot.  Like how a kid loves playing with bouncy balls.  You see their eyes light up with joy and excitement, even if it is going to hit them smack dab in the middle of the face.  I love them.  

The couple that got married were close to us, the bride's older brother is mine and the Mr's best friend.  I've grown up with the family since I was in second grade.  To me it felt like my little sister got married.  Not only was the location, trinkets, and actual wedding itself absolutely stunning, what this ceremony symbolized left me feeling renewed.  Samuel and Hillary and I have many things in common, we started dating in high school, we broke up for a short time to figure out life, we waited until we got married, we were even married by the dame pastor and commonly refer to our premarital counseling binder as "The Beast" because it is so massive.

I'm a crier.  At any wedding I will shed some good ol' happy tears.  But as I was listening to our home pastor lead the wedding ceremony, the importance of marriage, the covenant it is, was something you don't hear often.  Even at this wedding one of our old college friends was asking "what's the point in getting married".  And as I was listening to the ceremony I began to think about my own marriage and how much we have grown in just three years.  I felt tears well up in my eyes not because of how beautiful the ceremony was but how beautiful marriage is, that God has blessed you with someone to spend your whole life with, to grow closer to Him with, to have a family with, be best friends with, and ultimately love one another in deeper ways than you thought imaginable.  

The pastor shared that the number one thing that ruins marriages is selfishness.  I let that sit with me for a bit, and realized that it all boils down to that.  It is so simple, yet so very true: selfishness.  We read the book Love and Respect before we got married and at the time it was something difficult for me to grasp and really envision.  I was a pretty independent person so understanding how my actions should look to show the Mr. I respect him was new for me.  However, I can write today that all I want now is to grow closer to my husband, run home to him rather than have a girls night out, and put more energy into him than myself.  I'm learning how to be selfless in my marriage, think of his needs and wants more than mine, and how to love him in his love language.  

I feel like I'm rambling now but my heart is just gushing at the seems with love and joy about marriage. It's something special!