Six weeks from tonight I will be married. My name will be Rachel Dobler. I will wake up the next morning and every morning after next to my very best friend. Mm, I can hardly believe it!!
Over the weekend, I had some interesting thoughts about hope and how it's so easy to lose. That's an odd thing for a young bride to say with her whole life before her, but be honest. Doesn't hope feel like an illusive thing sometimes? Even when plans are going smoothly, it's hard not to wonder what might go wrong or even to get complacent in that secure rhythm. And when circumstances are hard, it's difficult to keep one's chin up and remember to breathe. What I felt in my spirit was this awakening to the responsibility to keep hope alive. In relationship and in life, it is vital that we engage in order to grow and to fulfill ourselves and one another. But the price to be paid for hope is creating, wishing, waiting. Really, it's like preparing one's heart and laying a foundation for faith. It is costly to risk, but is it not more costly to sacrifice my joy in the smoke of cynicism and fear? Phrases from Scripture echo like "love, power, and a sound mind" and "do not be anxious" and "faith is the assurance of things unseen." Hold on to hope.
As for the wedding, it's taking form, becoming less idea and more reality with every day of option-exchange and planning and decisions. Two weeks ago we officially set the venue for Lockheart Gables. The week after that, we picked up the invitations from the printers. And hopefully soon, one may show up in a mailbox near you. Lockheart Gables is really going to be ideal. When Mom first showed me the website I thought, "B&B? Does it GET cornier than that?" I went and saw it having already written it off but praying that it would be the right one just so we could stop searching. Sure enough, they let us tour two days before our appointment, we talked to the owner David (my dad's name) and heard about his wife Marilyn (my Grandma's real non-Grandma name) and how she collects teacups (like my Nana did). I really liked the place immensely despite the house's very frilly contrast to my earthy vision and let my eye imagine what could be. Once I saw the outside area under the harboring shade of full, leafy trees, I knew we'd found it. With a waterfall as a backdrop and green grass for my to-be bare feet, my earthy garden fairy-like dreams could come true.
Now, I'm scheming up decorations to accent the natural beauty and centerpieces to coordinate with the very influential help of friends. It's the minute details that I have such a hard time with... how to get it all done by that day and on that day is the real challenge. Mom remembers everything I forget and if she doesn't, someone else does. So the chaos of the unknown is giving away to deposits, deadlines, and dress alterations.
Peace, love, and centerpieces.
"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us."
--Ephesians 4:13-20
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