I had the wonderful and memorable privilege three years ago today, to participate in a wedding ceremony of a very dear friend and young woman whom I already loved and respected, but whom I have grown to love even more over the years. Oddly enough, she left shortly after the wedding to live in Chile with her new husband and daughter and I have not seen her since then. I miss her mightily. So do lots of other people who saw her through some trying times, and helped her learn and grow into the amazing superhero mother-wife-woman she is today.
This is a young lady who endured some of the worst childhood trauma I can imagine, yet whose heart keeps expanding wider and wider — like a perpetually blooming rose. She is beautiful although she sometimes thinks she is not (don’t we all go through that?) She is a loving, attentive mother with a strong bond to her child. She loves her husband with all her being, and she knows what it meant that day when she promised to love him through thick and thin.
I witnessed their marriage at the courthouse and helped them write their vows. Along with many other people who helped them both along the way, I talked to them about the things they’d stumble upon as the years go by. Money issues, cultural differences, language differences, child rearing philosophies, boredom, times of inequality, communication problems.
We all also reminded them to notice and look forward to JOYS that would be theirs because of their commitment.
Now, three years may not sound like a long time to some of my readers … but for this couple, as for any couple who marries in their teens, it is a great accomplishment. Today they celebrate three years of promise. Three years of growth. Three years of growing closer together in spite of differences in culture and language and upbringing. Three years of loving their daughter and being a family. And three years of welcoming others into their lives, of stretching their comfort zones and what they thought might be their limits.
So, Naomi and Cristian, I salute you for coming this far. I salute you for going beyond what you thought you were capable of. I honor and respect you for sticking with each other, for being kind to each other, for apologizing, for making repairs, for building a new life together, and for always. always. always remembering what brought you together for life.
All my love,
Maureen
