Checking in to apologize for the radio silence and assure you a new beginning is in sight!
Marriage has been much on my mind, and I’m hoping to write more on interrelated topics soon, but meanwhile let me say that the past several months have been the most work* I’ve ever put into preparing for a single sacrament.
Usually my advice to young couples is to keep the wedding small and hold onto as much of your savings as possible for getting your marriage off on solid financial footing. I stand by this generally. I remain absolutely firm on avoiding all wedding-induced debt, and likewise leaving the emergency savings untouched, even if it means just a tiny wedding with only the very closest family.
And yet sometimes parenting takes us to new places. Unexpected plot twists that have come to us thus far in the journey:
- We became rabbit lovers!
- We became sports parents!!
- We became big-wedding people???!!!
These things happen. Your vocation should lead you to new places, and here we are.
In prayerfully discerning whether to accept the very generous contributions of some loved ones to basically double our budget so this wedding could be a much more elaborate affair than previously planned, what I found myself coming back to in prayer was The Wedding at Cana.
Here is this young couple embarking wholeheartedly on a marriage that is exactly what our world needs — cherishing each other, centering their lives around Jesus, eager to embark on their lifelong mission together as husband and wife for certain, and as father and mother when the time comes.
Our other children and their peers can attest that it can be very hard to find a future spouse, even when you are both intentional in your dating and open to letting God surprise you.
There are no guarantees in life, but if ever I had confidence that an engaged couple had chosen well and were likely to succeed, with the Lord’s help, at the long and challenging vocation ahead of them, this is that moment.
So yes, this is indeed something to celebrate.
Well, you don’t go big and stay within even generously-loosened financial constraints unless you put a load of work into it. At every turn my daughter has been finding the most frugal way to get the thing done, putting hours of work into researching, handcrafting, and carefully selecting where to outsource help and what to do in-house.
I’ve been the co-conspirator all along, letting her lead but putting in the manpower when there is something I’m uniquely suited to either by talent or dint of free time.
It’s going to be good. So beautifully good.
But I don’t anticipate any serious writing happening through the rest of June, because I’ll be deep in extended family time before and after.
In good news: Come August our youngest goes off to college, and the SuperHusband and I will be empty nesters! So after a summer that will stay pretty busy even after the last of the wedding guests heads home, it is our plan that I’ll focus in the year head on more writing stuff.
We all know how plans tend to go, but my hope is to pick back up with a novel project that, while entirely, 100%, heavens to Betsy this is fiction fiction fiction, will certainly having me doing a lot of thinking about the kinds of topics I write about here and at the ‘stack.
That’s the hope.
Anyway, rejoice with me as my daughter and future son-in-law prepare for the biggest moment in their young lives, and thanks for being here.
Artwork: Wedding at Cana, public domain, click through for details and a full-resolution image. Yes, this is basically what my life feels like right now, but in a good way!
*Okay if we count gestating and delivering the recipient, then I’ve put waaaay more work into four baptism preps. Although, then we think about two decades and change spent rearing the Fitz-half of the couple, and there we are.
PS: 100% I got my daughter a copy of The Sinner’s Guide to NFP. You know it.
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