For A Bride

How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!

—Song of Songs 4:10

When people tell you that your wedding day is the best day of your life, it sort of sounds like they’re saying that it’s all downhill after the wedding. So many pastors make it a point to tell you, right during the ceremony, that it’s all fun and games while you’re wearing the dress and holding the flowers, but that serious business starts when the dancing stops. That’s true, in some ways. Marriage is a serious business, and there’s a lot to marriage that you can’t see from where you’re standing in the front of a church, bridesmaids surrounding you.

But on that day, you cannot imagine the beautiful, life-altering, soul-shaping things ahead of you. I know you believe that you could not possibly love him more than you do right now. I understand that. I felt that. I was wrong. What you feel on your wedding day is like dipping your toe in an ocean, and with every passing year, you swim farther and farther from the shore, unable, at a certain point, to see anything but water. This is just the beginning, and you can’t imagine the love that will bloom between you over time.