A wedding and a princess

Did you watch the Royal Wedding? Did you see that lovely dress?? In case you didn’t, please take a look at this:

The bride was nothing short of stunning. (As I have stated several times today- I’d like to get married again just so I could wear that dress!) Later today I actually read an article stating that Kate Middleton’s choice of a modest gown, could go a very long way in quite possibly stemming the recent trend in highly immodest clothing being worn by both mothers and daughters.

This morning I sat with Max and watched the wedding. I had it recorded on the TV as I was not interested in getting up at 2am to watch it live. And the whole time Max was fascinated and kept telling me that I was the princess and I used to live in a castle and that he liked when I was a princess and I got married too. Then he asked me if he could give me a princess hug. Love his little heart, I could tell that he honestly believed that I was a princess and I love him for it.

It was a beautiful service and as I watched Prince William and Princess Catherine and all the adoring crowds screaming and yelling for them- it seemed to me that the couple really looked like they viewed each other as equals and that they were in love and that they truly like each other- and I was so happy for them. And I thought, “I think that I really must be Ernie’s princess because I feel just as happy and content as I think Kate feels right now and she just married the man who is the future king of England.” I wouldn’t trade places with her for anything in the whole world.

My favorite part of the wedding- and there were many things that I liked (especially the choir music)- was the sermon given by the Bishop of London. It was simple and well stated and it was true doctrine. I liked it so much that it bears repeating and I am including it here:

“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves.

Many are full of fear for the future of the prospects of our world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in every continent are able to share in these celebrations because this is, as every wedding day should be, a day of hope. 

In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding with the bride and the groom as king and queen of creation, making a new life together so that life can flow through them into the future.

William and Catherine, you have chosen to be married in the sight of a generous God who so loved the world that he gave himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

And in the Spirit of this generous God, husband and wife are to give themselves to each another.

A spiritual life grows as love finds its centre beyond ourselves. Faithful and committed relationships offer a door into the mystery of spiritual life in which we discover this; the more we give of self, the richer we become in soul; the more we go beyond ourselves in love, the more we become our true selves and our spiritual beauty is more fully revealed. In marriage we are seeking to bring one another into fuller life.

It is of course very hard to wean ourselves away from self-centredness. And people can dream of doing such a thing but the hope should be fulfilled it is necessary a solemn decision that, whatever the difficulties, we are committed to the way of generous love.

You have both made your decision today – “I will” – and by making this new relationship, you have aligned yourselves with what we believe is the way in which life is spiritually evolving, and which will lead to a creative future for the human race.

We stand looking forward to a century which is full of promise and full of peril. Human beings are confronting the question of how to use wisely a power that has been given to us through the discoveries of the last century. We shall not be converted to the promise of the future by more knowledge, but rather by an increase of loving wisdom and reverence, for life, for the earth and for one another.

Marriage should transform, as husband and wife make one another their work of art. It is possible to transform as long as we do not harbour ambitions to reform our partner. There must be no coercion if the Spirit is to flow; each must give the other space and freedom. Chaucer, the London poet, sums it up in a pithy phrase:

“Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the God of Love anon,

Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon.”

As the reality of God has faded from so many lives in the West, there has been a corresponding inflation of expectations that personal relations alone will supply meaning and happiness in life. This is to load our partner with too great a burden. We are all incomplete: we all need the love which is secure, rather than oppressive, we need mutual forgiveness, to thrive.

As we move towards our partner in love, following the example of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit is quickened within us and can increasingly fill our lives with light. This leads to a family life which offers the best conditions in which the next generation can practise and exchange those gifts which can overcome fear and division and incubate the coming world of the Spirit, whose fruits are love and joy and peace.

I pray that all of us present and the many millions watching this ceremony and sharing in your joy today, will do everything in our power to support and uphold you in your new life. And I pray that God will bless you in the way of life that you have chosen, that way which is expressed in the prayer that you have composed together in preparation for this day:

God our Father, we thank you for our families; for the love that we share and for the joy of our marriage.

In the busyness of each day keep our eyes fixed on what is real and important in life and help us to be generous with our time and love and energy.

Strengthened by our union help us to serve and comfort those who suffer. We ask this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Amen.    

Hobbies

Ernie- for those who don’t know- is currently obsessed with photography. This is normal for Ernie, completely normal to have an obsession. Ernie is the kind of man who knows a great deal about pretty much everything and loves, loves, loves to have a hobby. Ernie is also an all or nothing hobbyist. His interest range is extensive, but every few years something strikes him the right way and a full obsession is born.

Let’s recap.

When I was pregnant with Little Ernie, Ernie and I went into a fish store. In the back of the shop they had this amazing room with all these walls of fish tanks. The fish tanks were full of coral and exotic looking fish and I called out to Ernie, telling him that he should check it out. And that, ladies and gentleman, is how the Reef Tank Obsession was born. Ernie’s salt water tank started with a 55 gallon tank and by the end- consisted of a 180 gallon tank, built into the wall of our basement in Indiana. We killed fish (at $40- $100 a piece). We killed coral (at $20-$150 a piece). We invested in equipment and then more equipment to keep the pH balance, the calcium levels, and the salinity right. We learned that the appropriate lighting for a reef tank requires metal halide lights which are only used for two reasons: coral reef fish tanks and growing pot in your closet. The fish tank, in short, was a money pit- but it was beautiful and the kids loved it. Over the years of crisis management with Ernie’s fish tanks, while he was traveling full time, and him trying to talk me through the trouble shooting over the phone and fish dying and water leaking- I began to develop negative feelings about his hobby. It’s been 4 years since we said good-bye to the fish tank. Ernie sold all the fish, coral, and equipment at a fire sale in our basement before we left Indiana. And I’ve made him promise, that while it was beautiful, we won’t have a fish tank again for a long, long time. This was the final iteration of Ernie’s Reef Tank, built into the wall of the basement:

Then Ernie became interested in woodworking. Now this is a hobby that I can get behind- no doubt about it. At the moment my dining room table is planed and joined and in partial assembly in our garage. But in the beginning, this hobby involved many, many purchases of expensive tools in a short period of time and an addiction to ordering wood off the internet. Ernie- and I cannot judge him for this- likes to buy interesting wood just as much as I like to buy fabric and we have a lot of wood stacked up and stored in our garage, plus all the tools and custom work bench on which to use the tools. And since our last two houses have been 2 car garage homes (as opposed to our other houses with 3 garages) I have not parked my car in the garage in several years. This is a picture of the beautiful wooden box that Ernie made for me a couple of months ago:

And now Ernie is a photographer. We started with a Nikon D40 and a 18-55mm lens. Now we are on to a Nikon D80, several lenses, a Flickr obsession, and Ernie has been asked to photograph golf courses for Here’s Hattiesburg magazine here in town. Every free moment Ernie has, he takes pictures. The camera bag and tripod live in his car because he often stops on his way home from work to photograph a beautiful sky or a dilapidated barn full of kudzu. The kids are often the subject of his photos, and me too- although I am admittedly less willing than the kids. Ernie’s quite gifted and he has a really good eye. I enjoy his photographs very much and I often enjoy the weekend drives we take as a family, meandering down back roads, looking for the perfect spot to take a picture. Here’s a barn he photographed yesterday:

Over the years I’ve become much more tolerant and understanding when an obsession strikes. I appreciate that it represents a lot of what makes Ernie wonderful- it shows Ernie’s awesome desire to always be learning new things.

Harder than I expected.

Nigel didn’t finish his homework this week. For the last 3 months he has stopped turning it in regularly for various reasons. His teacher made it clear to him- after she called me- that the next time he failed to turn in his homework, he was going to be issued a “Short Form”.

This morning, Nigel was hysterical because while he did his math homework this week, he never did his language and his plan had been to get up early and do it this morning. But when he opened his backpack, he learned that he didn’t even bring his homework home from school yesterday and there was absolutely no way to pull it off this week.

This is when the begging started. “Mom, please call Mrs. Herring and tell her everything I had to do this week that made me not get my homework done.” (Given that Nigel has played a lot of video games this week, I pointed that out to him and declined.) “Mom, please just write her a note and ask her not to give me a “Short Form”. An aside- it is touching to me that Nigel feels like I can fix everything in his life and he has that level of trust in me that he would even ask.

Unfortunately I had to have the Personal Responsibility talk with him. After we established that it wasn’t anyone else’s fault that Nigel didn’t complete his homework this week- I explained to him that he knew what the consequences were and that he was just going to have to accept the punishment. I told him that situations like this have happened to me before too and sometimes we just have to take the consequences of our choices. We said family prayer and specifically prayed that Nigel would be brave in facing his teacher and that the Holy Ghost would help him today. And then I sent them off to school.

Here’s the crazy part. I almost acquiesced when he was crying and begging me to help him. I wanted to protect him and not see him hurt or be uncomfortable. It was so hard not to intervene on his behalf or offer to go with him when he talks to his teacher. I know that it was important to have him face up to this on his own and that I did the right thing. I even think that I might have said the right things when I was talking to him this morning. It was just so much harder than I ever expected.

I noticed

Last week I got an email from my Ernie. It was a meeting notification from his Outlook informing me that I had been invited to attend “Date Night”. I felt- understandably- a little swept off my feet that after all this time, Ernie would still take the time to ask me out on a date. (And the fact that he was thinking about spending time with me while he was at work, makes it even sweeter!)

So on Friday night, Ernie took me to dinner. It was a new restaurant and the food was delicious (crab cakes, baked brie, asparagus with gorgonzola cheese sauce, grilled shrimp, tender NY strip steak, you know… basically amazing.) And afterwards, we drove with the windows down and heard a band playing, so we found our way to a small concert in the park and got out and meandered until we found a seat. We sat and listened and people watched and had a very nice time.

The weather was perfect, the food was delicious, the conversation was sparkling and the music was good- but here’s what meant the most to me and here’s what I noticed. Ernie intentionally didn’t bring his phone into the restaurant. He picked a restaurant that didn’t have any televisions on the walls. He planned an entire evening that intentionally focused on me. And since my Love Language is Quality Time (and he knows it)- I got his message loud and clear. Ernie was telling me that he loves me. And I noticed. And I love him too!