There are moments in life so steeped in prayer that, even if something seems to go wrong, it turns out to be just right.
Months ago, when my daughter announced that she and her fiancé were planning to get married in March, in an outdoor ceremony overlooking the ocean, I did what mothers do best: I bit my tongue and began to pray like crazy.
I am good at the praying part, thanks to my daughter and her two brothers who’ve given me years of practice. The tongue biting part is a bit harder.
I was tempted to say, “Sounds great, but, um, what if it rains?”
Actually, that is exactly what I said. But I said it very nicely.
Spring in California is a glorious season of blue skies, warm breezes and dazzling green hills carpeted with wildflowers that pour over the slopes as if God had spilled buckets of paint _ orange poppies, blue lupine and wild yellow mustard.
March is wedding-picture perfect. You can count on it. Unless it rains.
“It won’t rain,” said my daughter, “it will be beautiful.”
Then she added, “If it rains, we’ll deal with it.”
“You’re right,” I said, “it’ll be beautiful. Will you pray, too?”
“I already started.”
If this was not the wettest winter of my life, it certainly had me fooled. For months before the wedding, each time I checked the forecast (which I did several times a day) I would get a severe weather advisory that said, in effect, “Tie down your goat and start building an ark.”
When my daughter was a little girl, I often pictured her on her wedding day, all grown up and gorgeous, walking down the aisle on her daddy’s arm.
I never imagined it in rain. I never imagined it without her dad, either, until we lost him to cancer. Things change. As my daughter says, you deal with it.
The day of the wedding dawned clear and blue, not a cloud, not a raindrop, not a problem in sight. I kept praying, just in case.
Her brothers escorted me to my seat, then took their places at the altar with their wives and soon-to-be brother-in-law.
When the music began, I stood to watch my daughter, all grown-up and gorgeous, walking up the hill on her stepfather’s arm.
It was a picture-perfect wedding, start to finish, in every way. Except for the cake.
She wanted it to look like a tree trunk with love birds and flowers decorating the top, and on the side, a big heart carved with their initials, “J+H.”
Imagine our dismay to arrive at the reception and find that apparently the baker forgot the plan. No heart. No initials. No nothing. It looked like a bad hat for a snowman.
As the bride and I stood gawking at the cake/hat, her brother _ the same one that she liked to dress up as a girl, back when he was little, and parade him around the neighborhood _ came rushing to her rescue.
“I can fix it, Sissy,” he said.
And so he did. Using a kitchen knife and taking his time, he carved a big, perfect heart complete with “J+H” into the “trunk” of the cake.
“Look at that, Mom,” said the bride, beaming at her brother. “Could anything be cuter?”
Minutes later, she and her husband danced their first dance, took the first steps of a journey Tennyson called “that new world which is the old.”
Whatever storms come their way, whatever life has in store, with the grace of God and the love of family and friends, they will deal with it together.
That will be their job, their commitment to keep every day.
Mine will be to keep praying.
Speak Your Mind