Thoughts At A Wedding Shower

Recently I attended a bridal shower for my oldest granddaughter given by her new mother-in-law. No detail had been spared to make the room an elegant, welcoming, and enjoyable place for a young bride to meet her new family as well as her mother-in-law's friends, and to greet her own church family.

I, who had always been part of her inner circle of close family, was now a stranger to most of these women. They didn't know the inside jokes we had enjoyed throughout her growing up days, the bonds of family love we have always shared with her, the twenty plus years of family Christmases, weddings, funerals, birthdays, picnics, graduations, illnesses, sorrows, joys, and triumphs that have been part of the mosaic of her life and ours. Today I was someone to meet. A face with a relationship to the bride whose name most of them wouldn't remember by the end of luncheon.

But as a grandmother who knows the little bird must fly the nest, it was wonderful to see our girl move from person to person, hugging, laughing, welcoming, introducing, moving throughout the room as a young guest of honor/ hostess should, taking her new responsibilities in hand as well as truly enjoying enlarging her borders as she acknowledged this new family and circle of friends that was now hers. My heart swelled with gratitude as I recognized that hers would be a life rich in family, friends, church, country life, and both new and old traditions. I could not have wished more for her.

As the shower progressed and our watches told us that soon the opening of gifts would begin, our bride suddenly looked up, and there was her beloved walking in the door of the hall. In a flash, she left us to greet him with a radiant smile, a few words that only they could hear, and an excitement I pray she feels every time he enters a room for the rest of both of their lives.

A door was closing for her family. She didn't know it, but I could see it. It wasn't a bad thing. It was a good thing. It was as God intended. This tall young man would soon be her home, her life, her shelter in the storms of life. He would be her best friend, the one she loved, the one she would be angry at, but turn to because he was the one she always turned to. They would have secrets that none of us would know. They would live together, pray together, rejoice and grieve together. And as we faded and passed from this life, they would remember us. Together. Always together. The two of them.

It was right. It was part of God's plan. It was what I had prayed for throughout her life. And the rest of us, who would always be her family, would continue to be her family, but now the center of her family would be her husband. For a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife. And the two shall be one flesh.