Laaast cousin's wedding (of 2012)

The trip to Rhode Island was to celebrate my last cousin getting married, this year anyway. There is only 1 planned so far for 2013, but we'll see! Everyone is getting to 'that age' so I'm sure they will be rolling in fast. I always wanted to try and make it to as many cousing weddings as I could. I'm glad I went to this one, I was the only cousin representing! But it was a really good time with my mom, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. I love my family.

Another wedding, no tears, success. It was a pretty quick ceremony. Their pastor did things a little strange, he didn't even say, "I now pronounce you man and wife" which I specifically remember since our pastor made a huge deal of how that was his favorite part of performing weddings. He said he loved being able to speak something into being. So I noticed when this guy didn't do it, he just was like 'go greet your guests'... mmmmm... ok, but we clapped and cheered anyway and it was beautiful. Some pics from the day:

They had this reading during the ceremony, I expected bible verses but they read a passage by Anne Morrow Lindberg from "The Gift of the Sea":

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

I'm not sure how I feel about this quote. It's kind of nice, I think there is some truth to it. I did not like at all the second part of the quote so I left it out. Anyway, I definitely put more weight on what God says about marriage; that it's to make us holy, not necessarily happy (all the time at least). God created marriage to bring us closer to him and to bring us more joy in our lives. Marriage is for the purpose of sanctifying one another, for mutual sanctification and becoming one with another.

I thought I was pretty prepared when I went into my marriage, it's a hard thing feeling like you did everything 'right' and it still ended up like this. I remember crying to my mom about that once, but I do feel that I can look back and feel that even though it ended anyway, I don't have regrets and I can be proud of doing things God's way. I have learned so much. And God has been faithful.

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? Numbers 23:19

I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself... O LORD God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O LORD, and your faithfulness surrounds you. Psalm 89:2,8

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the LORD, who has compassion on you. Isaiah 54:10