The Bride Thing

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I doubt that anything is more revealing about my current life then my internet browsing history. Sometimes I go check it out just to appall myself with how much time I’ve wasted on Facebook in the last 24 hours or to figure out how I ended up spending 2 hours online instead of 10 mins. One thing that is obvious in my browser history is that my google searches have taken a shift recently. I find myself googling things like “how to write your own vows”, “is black too morbid for a wedding?”, and “ten ways to help your bridesmaids not hate you”.  It's a whole new world.

I’ve been a bride-to-be for 11 weeks now. Some of those weeks I have enjoyed it and some of those weeks I have not. To be honest, some of those weeks have been pretty miserable and tearful. I’ve had an attitude about this bride business from the beginning. I guess it started a long time ago when I was repulsed by the fuss, extravagance, and anxiety that is involved in planning weddings and reacted to it by vowing that would never be me. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that in its place I adopted a fearful and un-confident attitude about my own wedding. In other words, my awesome plan back-fired on me.

So I made noble efforts to get a better handle on things and resolutely decided that I would get over myself and do the whole “bride thing” - hook, line, and sinker. I’d let go of my pre-conceived ideas about brides, trust God, and allow myself to get knee-deep in candles, roses, and pom-poms. I’d have fun planning the event that is going to change life as I know it. Despite all these good intentions, it's been hard to live out a confident, stress-free engagement. Many loving well-meaning friends have told me that this is typical and normal, but that it's very important to live in the moment and enjoy the process anyway. I love that they love me enough to want to comfort me, and I bet a year from now I’ll be telling all my bride friends the same thing. But I’m finding that typical and normal can become such a depressing drag. I don’t want to spend the next six months fighting through one fear after another or spending the precious moments that I’m not stressed and fearful trying to decide if I’m “living in the moment” or not. Whatever that means.

Well, this past week God has downloaded this verse into my mind and it has really changed my perspective on being a bride. Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

This verse is always terribly encouraging to me. I have no problem knowing and believing that God has begun a good work in me, but it's the “from-here-on-out” that worries me sometimes. I seem to continually be asking myself what I can do to give God more control over my life. Am I dead enough to self? Am I getting in the way of what God wants to do with my life? But this verse kicks those questions out of the way and replaces it with a quiet confident faith that God IS in control and He has promised to complete what He started. I need that reminder that I didn’t get to this place on my own, and neither will I finish the “race” on my own. He’s gonna keep doing a work in me, and of this I can be confident.

So when God hit the refresh button on this verse for me, I felt hope. It struck me that in the same way that we as the church need to be confident that He who began a good thing in us will complete it, so I need to be confident that God will continue completing this good thing that he started with me and Vince. It wasn’t my brilliant idea to marry Vince (well, not initially) and so if I really believe that God started this relationship then I will also have faith and confidence He will bring it to completion.  And yes, that includes things like finding a caterer and figuring out what to feed 200+ people.  He’s gonna do it – I know it. He’s gonna complete what he started. And He’s gonna do it on October 6th. Now there is something to be confident about.  

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