a glimpse into the life...

It was a grey day.
Rainy without the rain.
Inside felt like catacombes
and outside felt like dusk in a scary movie.

Don't worry--this is not going to be that bad! After all...
I just got back from marrying my best friend!
That's right. Jen is married, and I got to be the last one to stand between her and Jordan before they morphed into One. What an amazing feeling! If you're not familiar with the situation, you may be wondering what the heck I thought I was doing up there--well, Jen was dead set on me being the "minister" at her wedding, and she found a way to make it happen--so...there we were!

Do you find that cold weather makes you more aware of your individual status? Like, as in, aloneness?
I'm the kind of person who treasures my alone-time, but I'm also the kind of person who gets cold reeeal easy. So when it is bone-chillingly cold (just imagine how sad I am come January if I'm calling October 5th bone-chilling), I can't help but think I could really use another person around if only for their body heat. (Is that entirely creepy? hahah. Watch yourself--I'm out for blood!)

Weddings (especially the kind you are personally creating the ceremony for) tend to get you thinking about the relational element of life. We wound the theme of covenant through the Friesen union (again--if you're not familiar with the situation, they already had the same last name. Hilarious huh! Don't worry--they weren't related. We checked.) It was exciting, because they were manifesting and reflecting God's image in such a potent way, taking part in something so ancient and everlasting and magical as a covenant...maybe it sounds generic...but it was powerful to be the one mediating that (as opposed to daydreaming while some boring minister no one knows goes on and on about marriage advice or something dopey).

So I guess this all has just got me considering the deeply intimate and relational nature of God. I've never been a terribly intimate person, so that is a difficult one for me to immerse myself in. Today I've been going back through a bunch of bits in Donald Miller's Searching For God Knows What that I marked when I read it in August. I've encountered a lot of various "interpretations" of the gospel message in my days, but his is probably my favorite.

You are the bride to the Bridegroom, and the Bridegroom is Jesus Christ. You must eat of His flesh and drink of His blood to know Him, and your union with Him will make you one, and your oneness with Him will allow you to be identified with Him, His purity allowing God to interact with you, and because of this you will be with Him in eternity, sitting at His side and enjoying His companionship, which will be more fulfilling than an earthly husband or an earthly bride. All you must do to engage God is be willing to leave everything behind, be willing to walk away from your identity, and embrace joyfully the trials and tribulations, the torture and perhaps martyrdom that will come upon you for being a child of God in a broken world working out its own redemption in empty pursuits.

It's so crazy/great/amazing/mind-blowing/challenging/evvvverything...because...we're being called to the greatest intimacy and the greatest relationship we can ever know...at the same time we're being called to be the most "alone" we could possibly be.

I don't know that I want to say anything more about it right now.
But it's bone-chillingly exciting, isn't it??