Ok, the title is extreme and it’s not true. If your marriage depends on it there are other major problems.
Dang. I last published a blog over a month ago! I had written a blog about an angel lady I sat next to on the flight from Spokane, but it got deleted while in drafts, and I had zero endurance to start over. Life continued.
Planning a wedding and realizing I am getting married in less than 40 DAYS (!) takes away a lot of brain capacity and consumes it all. I’ve brought my dress to get altered, finalized plans, mailed invitations that potentially almost did not get shipped, and had the invitations shipped after a week of turning my hair gray (THE AMOUNT OF TIME SPENT ON CALLIGRAPHY!). I have realized that ‘Bridezillas’ do not start as bridezillas. Ok, maybe some people do, but the reality is that a person becomes it as weddings are stressful and can take things out of hand, which is so easy. There are so many decisions to be made for a wedding! There are so many details that do not matter except for the three-and-a-half-hour party and have nothing to do with the marriage that you think you are going insane because the color of ties is what is about to dictate the marriage. Ask me how I know.
I am not a fancy person. However, I sent invitations that Ryan’s mom found on Etsy, and after a quick “Do you like these?” back and forth, I ordered them. The invitations have been a running joke from the beginning with his mom and the fact that we planned a wedding in about two and a half weeks. Ryan and I have chosen things for the wedding fast because I do not have the brain capacity to worry about things like this. We needed invitations, and those were pretty. Done. I do not have to look at 7,000 others. I cannot handle it. We have done many things through deals or DIY, and I am so proud of us. Ryan suggested save-the-dates, and instead of spending the extra money when we didn’t have to I made one up on Photoshop and bought magnets from Amazon. While caring for my grandma, I bought a book teaching Calligraphy and used those skills for the invitation envelopes. We look fancy when we are not, and it’s pretty great.
We found many good bargains, and things worked out financially, which is a blessing. Ryan and I, who started not having “fancy,” suddenly got caught in the trap of tie colors. Let me say this detail: Ryan has color blindness and has trauma from his life of making color decisions. I cannot make a decision to save my life, nor do I care about ties, nor am I an expert on wedding coordinating. I texted my cousin in Washington, the Matron of Honor, about her dress color and asked if things matched. Suddenly, it was life and death over ties, and I finally texted this morning that it was spiritual warfare at this point, and I was over it. Everyone is out of town, there were no dresses to match, and then we ordered ties from the internet and had no idea what color they would look like. By this evening, we talked about how done we were over ties. I never want to hear the word tie or dusty blue again for the rest of my life.
The absurdity of this situation manifested while I was driving and loudly telling Ryan that if anyone comments on the tie colors, they seriously have bigger issues in their life if that is what they take away from our wedding day. If they mention the ties, it’s going in one of my ears and out of the other, adding, “Do I hear what I sound like? Yes, I hear myself.” Then we both paused and laughed for five minutes.
Have you ever gotten married or planned a wedding? Everyone has an opinion.
The stress only goes as far as one makes it, and the ties were a metaphor for something I have not quite figured out. The whole process went smoothly until it was not. I mailed the invitations only to find out they may not go out due to postage or the orientation of the envelope. That is a long story that almost caused heart failure, but to make a long story short, people got their invitations… finally! Then, in December, I was making my turkey gumbo and burned my arm. That is been healing and, hopefully, be faded enough by March.
To make a dramatic story short, NONE OF THIS MATTERS AT ALL. The music, the decorations, the tie colors, DON’T MATTER.
What matters is my relationship with Christ.
What matters is my relationship with Ryan.
What matters is that OUR relationship reflects Christ, and we are in His will.
What matters is living the vows Ryan and I make to each other every day for the rest of our lives.
What matters is treating Ryan the way God expects me to and honoring him the way scripture, not my feelings, says I should.
What matters has nothing to do with tie colors or the little annoyances of wedding planning.
I got a humble jolt back to reality this week as a relative’s in-law died in a sudden tragic accident. This family was dealing with another loss a couple of years ago, and suddenly they got hit with another. I was heartbroken for them, but I ran to my dad and Ryan and had us all stop what we were doing to pray. They were working on a cabinet they had just ripped out, and we all stopped, and I had my dad lead a prayer. That is what mattered. It was not the ties, music, the scar on my arm, or anything else, and the new perspective of “It is just a wedding” that came with that sudden life change that was so humbling.
I went through the “that’s not fair” and “why did this happen” stuff and kept hugging my dad and Ryan, telling them I didn’t want them to die.
“Aimee, we all will die.”
Eventually, what I believed was God whispering to me, was realizing we do all die. No matter how tight I hold onto my dad or Ryan or the fear that they will die does not change the fact that they will. I cannot change the day they do, and I am thankful I do not know when or how. Instead, I should rejoice that they know Jesus and that this life will pass away, but that we will all worship Jesus for eternity in the next. We are all sojourners, and that’s the purpose of life. Yes, I love this season of my life and am so thankful for all God has done, but we do not know what will happen. We do not know how long we are here for, and the entire point of life as a Christian is to die. We are not meant to be here forever, but we are to follow Christ and remember that “things that are gain to us are counted as loss for the excellency of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord”.
Having Jesus as our Lord matters. Eternity matters.
Dusty blue ties for a wedding do not.
In other news I have 39 days until I marry my answered prayer and I cannot wait.
Candace Cameron Bure is a bigot, but so are most Christians…
Besides getting married being the main thing taking up my brain, I’ve wanted to write about things I’ve listened to or researched, like Mormonism and cessationism. You know, light topics. 🙂 I cannot gather thoughts on those as I need to figure out where to begin. It would be like trying to sweep the ocean,…
The trustworthy pilot: The plane did not crash
I started this post on a flight to Spokane, Washington, to visit my cousin Emily after my canceled trip in February! It’s been a marathon of a day, but thankfully all has gone well thus far in my travels.On my flight to Dallas, I did not have much else to do except think, which led…
I would sell my birthright for Rouses turkey gumbo
A few years ago, I tasted gumbo that Brent’s mom cooked, and, to put it dramatically, it changed my life. Do you recall the story in Genesis where Esau gave up his birthright for a bowl of soup? I could finally understand the unthought-out, impulsive decision if he ate this turkey gumbo because I’d thought…
Beloved Oath of God 
My wife and I eloped and saved ourselves those weighty decisions. And you know, she’s still married to me!
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This was a wise decision 😀
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Ryan was not pleased with the title of my blog. Meanwhile, I am cracking up laughing hysterically!
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Maybe “wedding” would have been a better choice than “marriage”, but it is your blog.
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