peace, brother

it’s already been two years. wow. i swear it was just last week. 

i’ve had some kinda silly fears over the past couple of years, like: do i remember what his voice sounds like? do i remember his cackle? do i remember the scent of his car?

i sometimes wonder which stupid teeny-bopper, booty-music song he’d have playing in his cd player, or which action-comedy he’d be planning to go see this weekend. i wonder what he might’ve thought of the wedding, or what he woulda said in his toast. 

i also wonder if he knew this was coming: when he saw carrie and me at the hospital delivering his lunch or bubble tea, did he know we would someday get married, did he know he was looking at my future wife? 

i guess i’ve got a lotta questions to ask him when we meet again. 

But let me tell you something wonderful, a mystery I’ll probably never fully understand. We’re not all going to die—but we are all going to be changed. You hear a blast to end all blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up and blink your eyes—it’s over. On signal from that trumpet from heaven, the dead will be up and out of their graves, beyond the reach of death, never to die again. At the same moment and in the same way, we’ll all be changed. In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true: 

   Death has been swallowed up in victory! 
   Where, O death, is your victory ? 
   Where, O death, is your sting?

It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ.

 

married

carrie and i started dating when we were freshman at the uw. carrie watched me switch majors five times. i watched carrie find her calling. now, five and a half years later, we’re finally married. i am lucky to have such a beautiful bride. 

i know that the wedding day is not what makes a marriage, but carrie and i are so blessed to have had such a memorable wedding day. it was exactly what we hoped it would be: a time to honor our parents, an opportunity to hang with the community that nurtured our relationship, and a big open space to worship god. not everyone gets to have 350 of their closest friends and family come together in one place to celebrate, but that’s exactly what we experienced, and we felt so loved. 

anyway, there aren’t enough superlatives to express the heavy emotions of the day, so i’ll just say, it was really a happy day.