The Wedding Epidemic

I've always been intrigued by women’s obsession with weddings. Little girls start dreaming about their dress and prince charming as soon as they can twirl in some over dramatically puffy princess attire. It’s this strange epidemic among female kind, it consumes us, dresses and colors and flowers and pictures and centerpieces and invitations and cake decorations in the perfect location with all your favorite friends and their dates and distant cousins you’ve never met but heard give good gifts … it’s enough to make your head spin. I myself have never been particularly bothered by such superfluous details. My parents have been threatening me since before I was even convinced boys didn’t have cooties, that if I eloped I’d have to live with the knowledge that I ripped out their heart, stomped on it, and dug their six feet under about 30 years early.

Apparently they knew something about me I didn’t, and now, at just 20 years old, with 5 months of single life left, I get it. Weddings are a drag. And I really couldn’t be less motivated to plan one.

Here’s the way I see it; I got the boy, I booked the photographer, and I found the dress. Those are the things I get to take home at the end of the day. What more do you want from me?
Details have never been my strong suit.

But here’s one detail even I can’t seem to look past. In only 5 months, all eyes are going to be on me in that beautiful dress. And it hangs on the back of my door mocking me, “Who’s going to look better? Me? Or you?”

I suppose, even I, have caught the infection, the wedding bug, the bride blues. I don’t care what you call it, but someone needs to find some kind of cure so I can get my someday daughter vaccinated.

So today, when I couldn’t bear the taunting any longer, I went for a long over-do run.

AND I had a side-stitch starting with stride one. But, I kept reminding myself why I was doing this, and no, it wasn't just to shut up the teasing from my personified wedding gown. It’s because I want to offer the very best of me to the very best guy I know.

I kept telling myself, I know it’s hard and I know it’s painful, but keep going. I’m sure it looks a little funny, a little off stride to the rest of the world, but you know who you’re doing this for. I know you’re tired and I know you’d burn just as many calories walking for just a little while longer, but we’re not going to take the easy way out. Remember, you’re not doing this for yourself, you’re doing it for the one you love, because he should have the very best version of you.

And it really got me thinking, hmmmm that sounds very much like my relationship with Jesus. It’s hard. It’s painful. It seems a little funny to the rest of society. It would be a lot easier to go about life on my own agenda. BUT, I’m not doing life for myself; I’m doing it for the one I love, because He should have the very best version of me.

I am not only a bride to my fiance, I’m part of the bride of Christ.
And I’d like to do everything in my power to take his, His, breath away when I’m unveiled (literally) before him, Him, at the end of the aisle I’m about to walk down.

I suppose, you could call me a runaway bride; not for what I’m running from, but what I’m running to.

Maybe being a bride will teach me more than I expected.

Wedding Count down:                                                                          
143 days- 1 mile