The fireworks were spectacular: rippling into the air and echoing into Ironbridge gorge; chrysanthemums of colour exploding into each other, sparkling and fizzing in gold, silver, blue and orange. I watched as they spiralled and tumbled and crackled between the gunshot-crack of each tiny detonation.
I've been very selfish at weddings in the past. Somehow, through the lenses of my own situation, I've made my impression of them all, weirdly, all about me. It isn't a very wise idea. As much as I don't like it, no wedding I've ever been to has ever been about me. At the last one, I stuffily refused to be social and sat in the bar talking to Luke for several hours. Tonight, as the sky lit up with colour, I realised that there had been a better way all along.
Speaking of Luke, today was of course, his turn. In his inimitable ease and with his indefatigable humour, he stood at the front of the church, stood at the top table and stood at the door as he married Rebecca. The whole thing was perfectly lovely. She of course, sailed on the sea of calm she lives her life in, and was a picture of delicate grace and beauty. He had never been happier, and it beamed from his face. They are suited so remarkably well.
Suited. It seems an odd concept, that a person could be designed to fit another person, tailor-made for them. Compatibility isn't a perfect idea, I still think you have to work at it, but it must be lovely to know that in your team of two, something you can't do, the other person can do, better. Like the finest pieces of joinery, there's a certain elegance to the way you fit together, the richness you bring to the world in the joy of two whole hearts completing and adding, and multiplying as one. It's rather a lovely idea.
But if I may say so, especially to my old self, it doesn't also follow that without that you're incomplete. I don't believe that a marriage is two halves becoming one. If anything, it's two wholes becoming one. And I think I'm still trying to understand the mystery of what it means to be a whole and not a half. One thing I'm absolutely refusing to do is to sit miserably in the corner and sulk about it.
And so that is why, today, I was determined to be more than that - to fight off any thought that would take me wandering into the car park while everyone else was dancing. I've had enough of being that guy.
I think, actually, I'm still learning how to be content to be myself - and for now, for me, that really is enough, whatever the future holds. So I tried. I stuck around people, I joined conversations, I sat through loud music and I laughed at jokes, even though I didn't much feel like it. I was happy - not for me especially, but for the two people I have watched intertwine their lives so beautifully before their friends, their family and our great God who had brought them together. Because if it was about anything or any one, it was about them.
Trails of smoke filled the cold night air as the fireworks gave way to warm applause. I smiled as I thrust my hands into my pockets and turned to go back inside. When you look at the world through the happiness of others, you start to see things very differently, I think. This was a beautiful lens, and it was showing me something of heaven, something of love, and something of the heart of God Himself. And for that I can only be thankful tonight.
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