Melissa, The Married

I had the privilege of attending Melissa and Henry's wedding last week. Here they are cutting a delicious German chocolate cake! The bride and groom met during missions training in the summer of 2008, and Melissa was my roommate. Since then she's served in Rwanda from October 2008-May 2009. Currently she is working in a rescue mission with women in the inner city of Milwaukee.

One of my favorite parts of the wedding was when Melissa's coworkers sang (in a way that only African American women can!) and seeing Henry and Melissa smile and laugh together during communion, after they'd prayed together. I love to hear about how they affirm each other! Other excitement includes that two of her friends from Rwanda (Ben and Stephanie) were able to attend the wedding and that she got to Skype with a few friends currently in Rwanda the day before the wedding. Should you know much about African culture, it may also amuse you that Henry gave two plastic cows to Ben as a dowry for Melissa. One of her other friends said, "I told you she cost ten cows!" when they Skyped with him. He had just been listening to Melissa's conversation with one of her Rwandan girl friends, but he pipped up when he heard about the cows! Ben assured him that two was just a down payment...

Don't these look good? Apparently Henry has some quality flower arranging skills! It was neat to see how friends came together to lend table decorations, singing talents, kitchens to cook food, etc.

They did something unique (at least new to me!) with sand....they called it "unity sand." There was one color for the Holy Spirit and one for Melissa's life and one for Henry's life. During the ceremony they poured them all together. It is very hard to separate out sand after it's been poured together and thus it was a symbol of the blending of their lives. Also, they plan to take the sand out and re-pour it each year, to show how their lives are becoming more and more entwined with each other and with God.

I thought this was a cool picture.

Here's Melissa pointing out her new married residence. I had the honor of staying at her place and helping out with pre-wedding preparations. I can't tell you how FUN and how GOOD it was to be around her! She is a woman of great joy! She knows me well! And her faith inspires me and gives me hope!

Here she is at the hair place, opening one of many letters Henry wrote to her. She was instructed to open one each hour until the wedding. How sweet!

Here we are! After many fuzzy pictures taken by strangers that did not turn out (it was pretty humerus how frequent the fuzziness was!), we captured a shot of the two of us right before her and Henry headed out. Yeah!!

Perspective

As I was flying home from Wisconsin where I had the privilege of celebrating the marriage of two friends from missions training (Summer 2008 with NMSI), I was struck by the difference in perspective I had from the sky. I was thinking about how when God sees the world, he sees tiny houses the size of erasers on pencils and squares of green vegetation dotting the Earth. Yet, He also sees a couch in a living room where two friends sit together, clinging to each other as they cry over recent happenings in their lives. Or is present in the church when the eyes of the bride and groom first meet one their wedding day. He sees the far away, zoomed out picture as well as the intimate, up close picture.

Another realization of perspective came during Thanksgiving when I started making a list of all the hard things and good things that happened this year. Though I would characterize the year as “hard,” I was struck that there were at least twice as many profoundly good, meaningful experiences on my list. I couldn’t think of any other hard things. Partly, it hard to categorize some things as “hard” and not “good.” Also, there are several really hard things that were hard to remember or, I’m sure, some hard things that I actually did forget. It made me think about how big and intense those things seemed in the moment, yet even within the same year I can no longer remember them. God has this uncanny ability to see things in the long term like that, not denying that an event is powerful and transforming in the moment but also knowing that there is an element of “temporary” to it that I often don’t see as clearly as He does.

Will you pray that I learn to see from His perspective?