Mr. Lee, Mr. Lee

Until yesterday.

We’d always meant to watch it on an anniversary or Valentine’s Day or a lazy Sunday afternoon. But the memories etched into the cerebrum always seemed to offer playback enough. Over time, the details of the day never seemed to grow fuzzy.

Or so I thought.

I put the video in the slot for the first time and pushed play.

I swooned at how fresh our love, and how young our faces. I fell in love all over again with that Norwegian blonde and his blue-blue eyes, and that X-acto knife hair part that he still wears all these years later.

I remembered again the tummy-flips when Dad led me — all satin — to the altar.

And I recalled how Scott fidgeted with the diamond on my finger when he said the forever-words. He whispered that our wedding singers were “so good together,” and on the playback, I could make out the response on my lips: “So are we.”

Yes, I remembered the kiss and the candlelight and the cala lilies, too.

But until I watched the video, I didn’t remember what love felt like at age 24. And to think I thought our love was so very deep in 1996.

“Oh, Jennifer,” I whispered to the bride on the screen, “you had only a dim view of true love.”

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” — 1 Cor. 13:7.

Then, love happened.

It grew in trenches, and in the clinging, and in the tenderness of swaddled babies, and abandoned careers, and the moving home, and the pain of loss, and the joy of discovering who we are to the other, and in the growing up, and in the letting go, and in the knowledge that indeed, the one thing that held us together was not our own resolve, but a greater Love.

For God came to dwell in us,
and among us,
and filled the distance between us.

And it made our love grow deeper, compelled us to put down roots here on this Iowa farm where we’d never imagined ourselves to be back when we stood at the altar.

Yes, this must be true love, nearly 14 years after we said “yes” to forever.

“Now I know in part; then I shall know fully …” — 1 Cor. 13:12

This is repost from the archives.
Because we’re gone for the day.
Just the two of us! This bride is grinning.