Three Women and a Wedding

Tonight one of my cousins married a girl that was in the youth group I helped lead after college.  I knew it would be a good opportunity to see family and a lot of people I had not seen in ages.  It had been a challenging week on the singleness front, but I was genuinely happy to be there and wasn’t feeling the need to attend the wedding in a long black veil.

On a pre-ceremony trip to the ladies, I ran into the mother of the bride.  It was all smiles and big hugs until her first words were “You know this was supposed to be you before her.  What’s the problem?  Are you still being too picky?”  Boom, jump right to the gut punch.  Thankfully, I was already all prayed up from this week so I had the perspective to let this roll off my back while understanding this woman is someone that genuinely wants good things for me despite her initial approach.  And, most people have given up on me by now, so to have someone still think I’m young enough to have hope  and tell me I’ve still got time is kind of nice, right?  I didn’t take the time to explain the uncomfortable ways in which I had not been too picky or what my options have really been.  I chose to leave that conversation where it happened instead of carrying it with me and went to find a seat. 
 

Right before the wedding started, a large family slid into the seats to my right.  This group included a young woman from the same youth group as the bride.  I had not seen her since she lost her husband suddenly a few months ago.  She found him dead in a chair on their front porch.  He was coming home from work when he had an aneurysm and that’s as far as he made it.  This woman is in her mid-twenties and a widow.  She has a high school education and four kids under the age of five because all she ever wanted to be was a wife and a mother.  Her youngest isn’t even walking yet.  I know that I don’t understand what waking up in the morning is like for her.  Being single has led to a lot of rejection but spared me the risk of a heart fully torn apart like that. 

I made a dance circle with her and her daughters at the reception because it just seemed right.  The kids stayed out of trouble and I got to dance so it was a win-win.  And while I may not always have the right words, I’ve always got a dance so it was something I could give.  She had almost not come to the wedding because she didn’t want to take any attention away from her glowing friend on her wedding day.  She was also really nervous because she’d brought a date so quickly and she knew people would have opinions about that.  I didn’t judge her.  How could I?  Because if I understand anything I understand lonely and needing all the help you can get. 

While we were dancing a widow in her late sixties came over to tell us she was engaged.  She was giddy like a teenager and gushing.  I’d never seen this hard-working farmer lady dressed up, and here she was in a formal black gown with sparkles.  It was one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen.  She hugged the young woman and whispered something in her ear and they stood there holding each other, both bawling.  Later, the older woman found me.  She had been sitting on a bench with her fiancé outside the women’s restroom and heard my whole conversation with the mother of the bride.  She told me I might have to eat some of my words (she had sworn she’d never remarry) and it may come from the last place I expect (this man is the widower of her former husband’s sister), but hope is alive for me.

Sure, the wedding was nice.  They served a great spinach artichoke dip and a good chocolate groom’s cake, but twenty years from now I won’t remember those.  What I will keep is a snapshot of three women in overlapping stories of loneliness and redemption and how God used us to keep His promises.