It would be a long story to explain why, but I hadn't heard our organist until the rehearsal. She was horrible. She only knew one phrase of the wedding march, which she kept playing over and over, and she switched from organ to piano, without bothering to ask, because she was having some sort of technical difficulties with the organ. It wasn't the only thing that was going wrong. One of my groomsmen didn't show for the rehearsal, and the woman who had made our cheesecake wedding cake had gotten into a car accident with the cake, and was furiously trying to repair it.
My best man Dave was a prince. He camped out in his car in front of the missing groomsman's home to make sure he'd be there the next day. There were several other things he took care of too, and I knew as soon as he told me he'd take care of something that I didn't need to worry about it anymore. And so all the stuff I had to do was in the end just a distraction from the real business of the day, which was to change my life.
I had known Cecile for two years now. She had given her heart to the Lord soon after I met her, and I saw her life radically change. I've never known anyone to fall in love with Jesus like she did. We each struggled with our attraction to one another; for my part, I was afraid that she'd confuse her feelings for me with her newfound life in Christ, and I didn't want to take advantage of that. It was providential that I went back to seminary for another year while she got discipled. During the next summer back home, we got engaged, and then I went back for one final semester. By the time I was running around on that hot summer day in 1991, I knew I loved her. But in Christ, my conviction was that marriage is forever. There was no turning back.
The ceremony itself was beautiful, but my feelings about actually taking the vows were similar to what Corrie Ten Boom wrote about having lied to the Nazis about having a radio. She was trembling afterward, not because for the first time in her life she had told a conscious lie, but because it had been so "dreadfully easy." Repeating the vows that we had rehearsed was all too easy, but my life was changed forever.
For the last fifteen years, Cecile has been the greatest gift, apart from salvation, that God has ever given to me. She has been faithful, kind, understanding, and supportive through many career changes and moves. She has often been my only reason to keep going through periods of setback and discouragement. Words really cannot do justice to what she means to me. I truly believe that what we have is what God wants every married couple to have. Sometimes we have looked at one another when we've learned of struggles that other couples were going through, and wondered aloud, "What are we doing right?" I don't know what it is, but there must be something. I think it comes down to this: a shared commitment to God being more important than anything else in life, including one another, and a shared commitment to doing what is good for us together (and now, our family) rather than what appears good to either one of us separately.
In an era of rampant divorce, when divorce statistics within the church are just as bad as those outside it, we desperately need a return to God's principles regarding marriage. This does not mean remaining in bad marriages just so as not to be divorced; it means reaching out for God's help to overcome our own selfishness and make our marriages what He wants them to be. The opposite of love is not hate, or even indifference; it is selfishness. If we would truly heed the Biblical command to "love your neighbor as yourself" with just our one closest neighbor, our spouse, we could truly present a Godly alternative to the heartbreak and emotional destruction endemic throughout our world.
Thank you, Cecile, for the one decision that I know I've made right in my life. Thank You, Lord, for the greatest gift of this lifetime that You have given me.
For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .
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