I sometimes plan very far ahead, and sometimes…it just gets away from me. Today was one of those days. About an hour before I was to host a bridal shower with my sister at my house, I realized…I need to think about how it’s going to work. Did I have an agenda? I hate bridal games, and I knew I wanted it to be more meaningful than that, so…I thought: “I’ll have everyone go around and voice a prayer they would pray for the bride-to-be.
Once everyone had arrived, I began our time with some verses from Psalms and Proverbs and told the ladies I wanted each to share something they would pray for Erin. After the initial shock of having to think of something quickly, it was really amazing how these women, some married, others single, spoke into Erin’s life with love, compassion, and a desire to see God glorified through her marriage. Those who had been married could share from life experience how they would ask God to be with her in the early days, and that she would be able to accept and enjoy every season of life ahead.
I smiled as another of my nieces spoke her prayer of needing to love and accept her husband, remembering the things that she loves in him now may be things that she looks at in a different way in years to come. Her prayer was that she would remember that “first love” and accept him as the individual God had made him.
I amazingly (with God’s help) held it together to tie all these spoken words into a prayer for Erin to realize the love and support she has and to be reminded of these words in the days and years to come, knowing that God has heard and will answer in beautiful ways.
I really do not know how people enter into marriage without Jesus in the center. As I sat in that room today, surrounded by women I didn’t know but with whom I had a common bond in Christ, I thought how blessed Erin is to be in such a company of friends. Friends that know both the joy and pain of sharing life with another. Friends that know that Jesus makes all the difference.
As I look forward to my niece’s wedding and then my son’s in another few months, I’m thankful they will not be fluff and nothing affairs, but gospel and substance gatherings. Building their homes on Christ and to His glory.
Oh, how my heart hurts for this generation of lost souls looking for love in all the wrong places and starting off on the wrong foot, sometimes because “things happen.” Save us from ourselves and our selfish ways, and help those of us who have walked the journey to speak truth into the lives of the generations after us. May Christ build more and more houses in the days and years ahead because we have taken the step of speaking into the lives of our children and grandchildren of the beauty of the long, hard road that is so worth it.
Grace and Peace