Here Among the Trees
The list has begun.
For the wedding.
I really should have typed it in all caps:
THE LIST HAS BEGUN.
Because weddings have to-do lists that come with twelve months of items to check off. I know this because I went to the library where wedding books took up an entire bookshelf and then I came home and went to several elaborate online sites with page upon page of ideas of how to move through this $72 - $109 billion dollar a year industry, where the average wedding costs between $18,000 - $30,000, give or take a few thousand. (Only the Christmas industry is bigger.)
Being a pastor's wife and a mom of a married son, I knew this, but it still is a little intimidating when you discover yourself to be the MOTB. (Mother of the Bride.)*
Thankfully, my daughter has a just-because-they-say-you-need-to-spend-all-this-money-doesn't-mean-we're-going-to head on her shoulders.
The first item on her priorities-straight list:
T R E E S
Yes, trees.
Trees would not be difficult if we lived in Minnesota or Colorado or Northern California, we live in Arizona, where cactus is more prevalent than maples,
and we put rocks in our front yards instead of grass
and even when we try very hard,
plants wither and die in the 120-degree heat.
Yesterday,we went to a place with trees. We stood under canopying branches older than my daughter and envisioned
wedding guests, sound systems, and a wedding party standing RIGHT HERE in the trees.
Trees that withstood
branch-bending monsoon winds
blistering desert summers
and draught-causing rainfalls of nine inches a year.
But the person who trusts in the Lord will be blessed. The Lord will show him that he can be trusted. He will be strong, like a tree planted near water that sends its roots by a stream. It is not afraid when the days are hot; its leaves are always green. It does not worry in a year when no rain comes; it always produces fruit. -Jeremiah 17:7-8
I thought:
This is a good place to put down beginning roots into a marriage.
Here
among the desert trees.