His Vows

I am writing these vows at the end of a really long and stressful week, after we have completed list after list of wedding tasks only to find more lists. What helps me most to get through all this craziness is to imagine myself saying these words to you on the best day of our lives, when all the anxiety takes a back seat to your radiant smile and your gleaming eyes. This is the moment that sometimes seemed like it would never come.


I promise to love you forever. I can't promise that it will always be easy or pretty, but I promise that it will be true. I promise to always try to be the husband you deserve, even when we are tired, stressed, angry, or just confused. I promise to hold you when you feel alone, fatigued, and overwhelmed. I promise to provide for you, that is to provide silence when you are still waking up, provide corny jokes when you really don't need them, and provide poorly executed massages when you ask for them. I promise to cherish your laughter and tears even when they come all at once. I promise to respect you even if I think you are wrong, unfair, or just plain crazy. I promise to respect you as my equal in Christ. I promise to trust you in all circumstances, especially when my instinct says I should run and hide. I promise to remember all these promises even after eleven o'clock at night when I have lost the ability to think rationally.


You are more than I dreamed of, and the longer I love you, the more I find to love. You are God's gift to a truly undeserving man, and with His help, I promise to love and honor you with all my heart and soul for the rest of our lives.

How to Boil Water

STEP ONE
Receive an awesome cookbook from your aunt.

STEP TWO
Choose recipes--Tuscan chicken stew, Eggplant parmesan, chocolate chip cookies

STEP THREE
Grocery shop

STEP FOUR
Cook... for a really freaking long time. (lesson learned... if the recipe says one hour, it will take at least 2)
Place what you think is a dutch oven on the stove over medium heat. Apparently though it's a casserole dish and will spontaneously combust in about 2 minutes... exploding and shattering all over the kitchen.
Skin the chicken, even though the recipe was really clear you should have bought skinless in the first place.
Cut up the eggplant. Realize you don't know what the inside of an eggplant it supposed to look like and yours might be bad. Look on wikipedia for a picture. Decide you're ok.
Pour in Italian seasoning on the "pour" side not the "sprinkle" side. Try to scrape as much out of the dish as possible, although what remains is roughly 4x what the recipe calls for.

STEP FIVE
Make a huge mess. Use a different dish for everything. Curse the day you rented an apartment without a dishwasher.

STEP SIX
Enjoy a lovely meal and the wine you didn't use in the recipe.

Vows (the Mrs.)

I respect you as my equal in Christ and I promise to love first God and then you.

You have set me free to be who I am. You love me with a phenomenal and unconditional love that is the most perfect picture of Christ’s love for which I could ask. You have far surpassed my expectations of a partner and you have opened up my heart in such beautiful ways. I love the light in your spirit, your kind heart, and your constant seeking of truth.

I pledge to make Christ the center of our life and to pursue His love and justice together with you. I will honor your dreams, nurture your gifts, and embrace your deepest parts. I will not abandon my individual calling in favor of yours, nor will I allow you to sacrifice your individual calling in favor of mine. Rather, I will live our life together as we are one, pursue our collective callings, and seek interdependence with you. I will always try to fully communicate my feelings, fears, desires, and hopes.

Falling in love with Christ prepared me to fall in love with you, and I know that His love will sustain us, guide us, and impassion us forever.