Did you cry, people asked me.

I didn’t.

I am not sure it will make sense: I rested.

In the deep, wordless way of culmination.

My boy walked me down the aisle and seated me at the second pew, in the same spot where I sit each Sunday while his father preaches. In the same spot where I sat while I was expecting him and felt him stop moving whenever the piano was played, where I knew he was listening to the music before he was ever born. In the same spot where I sat with him in my arms for the first time during worship, when he was four days old.

I rested in the remembering.

I rested in the preparations being complete, and the long-awaited moment at hand.

I rested in the expression on my boy’s face, making his vows to his bride. I have never seen a groom with so tender a countenance. I marveled, and rested.

I rested, and rejoiced, that his father lived to officiate after suffering such serious health setbacks in recent years.

His father began to cry during the ceremony.

I rested in that love. In the overcoming. In the triumph.

I rested in the presence of my husband’s sister, that she traveled to be here, that she reminded my boy of his grandmother who loved him so. Ma-Ma is here, you know, she told my boy just before the wedding. She cried, too, over how much he looks like her mother.

I rested in the knowledge that my sister-in-law remembers her mother every time she sees a cardinal, her mother’s favorite bird. A symbolic bird, representing Christ. I remembered that my sister-in-law and my boy were holding Ma-Ma’s hands when she died. I rested in the serendipity of my boy’s bride choosing her wedding gown before she knew it was named “The Cardinal.” It happens to be her own grandmother’s favorite bird.

I rested in the significance of my boy’s precious bride wearing her grandmother’s pearls and my earrings, the third bride in the family to do so, after my first daughter-in-law and my youngest niece, who came with her new baby to see her cousin married. I recalled buying those earring for my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.

I rested in that.

I rested in the timing, in late September marking the births of my grandfather and my husband as well as the loss of my father, and that it now marks new joy.

I rested in the day, in the glorious cusp-of-autumn sunshine, in this season of scuppernongs and piercing calls of red-shouldered hawks. I rested in the symbolism of wildflowers that my new daughter-in-law loves so well; although delicate and fragile, they are incredibly adaptable and resilient. They represent delight of the soul. She carried wildflowers; they were the pattern of my boy’s tie. Her dress and their wedding rings also bear vines—a symbol of deep spiritual significance.

I rested in the Scripture my husband read, from the second chapter of the Song of Solomon, the first time he’s ever used it in a wedding:

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

I rest in the fact that my boy and his bride reside just four minutes away from me.

And I rest in the vows that they wrote and spoke to each other, and in the invisible thread that pulled them together, drawn by the hand of God.

Yes.

I rest in the litany of it all.

My boy and me in front of the church after the ceremony.
Behind us is the parsonage where we lived when he was born.

Photos by Kailey B. Photograhy

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the wonderful sharing-place
known as the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge