this is the story

How interesting, it’s been over two years since I posted on this little blog of mine. I remember popping on to write but never actually posted. This was more of a journal to get me through seasons of darkness than anything else, and, while I still have gone in and out of depression in the last two years I’ve been processing more though my art than through writing.

And so, here I am, sitting to write, not in darkness sad, just processing the two+ years.

Do you remember my last post? The one about sharing my space? It was inspired by a boy I had just met.

Well, “Read er, I married him .”

And a quiet wedding was had, just me, him and twenty family and friends attended. It was catered by a sweet girl who made lovely salads. It was decorated by uncomplaining sisters-in-love who pinned flowers for yet another bride. Lights were hung by the groom and his men. The brothers moved furniture and cement dipped posts. The sisters were in and out with cleaning and decorating, arranging and correcting. And all, including what few non family guests we had, cleaned up the remnants.

At the end of the day, in the summer dusk, I walked down the aisle to meet my Beloved to that one song that I had heard so many road trips ago, the words reverberating in late summer wind.

“This is the story of the Son of God
Hanging on the cross for me
And it ends with a bride and groom
And a wedding by a glassy sea”

It didn’t go as planned, weddings never do, but with the pandemic there was an added element of ‘not as planned’.

Without work we created, I began teaching art over Zoom and he made cider. We planned the ‘worse case scenario’ wedding hopeful that we were just being prudent, but spring rolled into early summer and we had to make the call. So we did, our worse case scenario was the best we had. Everything was both hopeful and stressful, the driveway bridal shower, the picnic in the park with only a portion of the bridesmaids, the guest list invited to participate via fb live.

The wedding was not what we had wanted, but exactly what we needed. Isn’t that how God works?

Hospitality had defined our relationship from the beginning (see this post) and defined it all along the way, why would it stop at the engagement?

In predictable style, hospitality would follow us all the way down the aisle, all the way to the long table with not enough seats, guests who had to shift to make room and too much food.

All the way to the coast and the sweet owners of the airbnb who happened to be in line behind us at Safeway that second night. Flowing up and around us as we came home to another wedding (and another, and another…). Through navigating new rules for socializing and old yearnings for company. Starting and stopping work more than once, holidays and (lo and behold) another wedding.

All the way, and yet, not nearly there.

For I am confident Dear Reader, hospitality shall follow us home.

“O death where is your sting
Cause I’ll be there singing
Holy, Holy, Holy…”

See below: Life this year in no particular order.