I've just returned from attending my Niece Kathy St. Cyr's (now Kathy Hughes) wedding in Annapolis. Kathy is my sisters second eldest daughter, and she married a young man by the name of Chance, who's just graduated from the Naval Academy with the intent to fly helicopters for the Marines. The setting for the wedding was idyllic - beautiful green lawn sloping down to the water, and directly across the Severn River the Naval Academy itself. The weather was touch-and-go all day: completely overcast and drizzling at times. The morning of the wedding, The St. Cyrs and Myers who were staying at my sister's house had a long time of prayer together (one of the many aspects of this wedding that stuck in my mind), asking the Lord to hold the rain off until after the wedding ceremony. True to form for the Lord, there was not a drop of rain before, during or after the outdoor ceremony - and the rain only started falling late in the evening when the reception was winding down.
I could not help but remark on the many deeply spiritual aspects there were surrounding this wedding. Both Kathy and Chance love the Lord deeply, and (even rarer today) both of them had kept themselves pure prior to their marriage. The image of the church being presented spotless as the Bride of Christ is only really demonstrated when two young people make the hard choices to refuse to engage in sexual activity outside the bond of marriage. But as I said before, this is almost unheard of today - which I find very sad. At the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding - after everyone had eaten their fill of melt-in-your-mouth, slow smoked beef and pork - Greg (Kathy's Dad) opened the invitation for anyone to share a thought, memory, funny story, prayer etc with Kathy and Chance. This probably went on for the better part of an hour, and almost everyone had something to say about Kathy and Chance related to their character, their love for one another, and most of all their love for the Lord.
The wedding itself was memorable for me for a couple of reasons: First, everything in the ceremony was designed for all of us to rejoice with Kathy and Chance in their joy, and to glorify the God whom they both serve. Kathy could not keep herself from turning her head around throughout the ceremony to look at various friends and family in the audience, and give them a wink or a huge smile. And the reception at the church was one, big PARTY! Almost everyone - including Ouma and Oupa (my folks) got out onto the dance floor and had an absolute blast. The room was so full of joy and laughter that there didn't need to be any alcohol - everyone was just soaking up the emotion of the moment. Kathy's brother-in-law Kevin and her cousin Nate kept us all laughing with their own version of the Chicken-Dance, or just making up the dance moves as they went.
When I got home and showed our three girls some of the videos I took, I told them what an enormous difference it made that Kathy had chosen a young man who obviously adores her, and who has a strong and deeply spiritual part to his character. When God tells us to choose a mate who is "in the Lord", He isn't out just to ruin our fun or to make us into straight-laced prudes. To the contrary, I've never been to such a fun, joyful, wild and crazy wedding in my life - and God was honored by everything that took place. So, my daughters; walk closely with God, and trust Him to bring you to the godly young men we've been praying for for all these years.
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