Wedding
love
On Saturday I conducted a wedding. I am not
sure if I want to do too many more of these, even though I think I am good at
them and able to put a ceremony together with a couple that is an expression of
who they are. But this wedding had a couple of special things about it. I got
involved with this couple because the bride was a daughter of a guy who used to
work at St John Ambulance as a mechanic. He had been made redundant about a
year ago, though he was retirement age anyway. He had phoned me and asked if I
would get involved. I agreed. Two good things happened…
(a) A couple arrived as guests at the
wedding who had assisted us with the Christmas Day dinner. We had had earlier
contact with them because we allowed them to use the Church for their family
music group to perform a concert.
They are simply lovely and loving people and were good friends of the
bride, with their daughter being a bridesmaid. Well I was blown away by the
warmth of their greeting when they saw I was the celebrant. They were still
buzzing about Christmas Day dinner. “It was the best Christmas of our lives”
they enthused as they met me with hugs. They also wanted us to come visit them.
I enjoyed the love.
(b) The father of the bride (the ex St John
Ambulance Mechanic) was trimming trees the Saturday before his daughter’s
wedding, in a bucket lift arrangement attached to a tractor. A branch fell
where it shouldn’t have and somehow the bucket tipped him out. He hit the
ground and ended up badly beaten up with all sorts of broken bones, in a body
cast, arm in plaster and in hospital.
He was apparently, unable to attend his daughter’s wedding. His
ex-colleagues at the Ambulance station got their heads together and when I
arrived at the wedding (in a public rose garden) here was an ambulance paramedic
with him all spruced up in a stretcher. We unloaded the stretcher at the right
time, wheeled it into place and tilted it so he could see proceedings. At the
appropriate time in the service he, with the rest of his family said in a loud
triumphant voice, “We do” when it came to giving the bride away. He received
hugs from the bride as she walked down the isle to be married, hugs and
greetings from guests and we even included him in the family photos. Then the
paramedic loaded him into the ambulance and took him back to hospital. I loved
the unselfish love of his ex-colleagues to make this possible. It was such a
warm loving thing to do. I got quite choked up as the bride kissed her father
and wondered if I had the voice to begin the ceremony.
Benefits
of exercise
On the 6th of January I
conducted a funeral. For this I
got my suit I seldom wear out of the wardrobe and put it on. It buttoned up but
was uncomfortably tight and the jacket was not sitting right because of
that. I have put on a lot of
weight. On Saturday 8th February I conducted a wedding and put the
same suit on. It fitted well. In
that time I have been exercising, not heavily, but exercising. I have a friend
that would like me to participate in a 10k run in March, so I have been
running, walking and cycling more. I was delighted that the suit already fits
better! I have also noticed a difference in my breathing. I was getting very
wheezy and short of breath, but I notice now that my lungs and breathing
systems have improved greatly. With regular, though not too difficult exercise,
my health and wellbeing is improving considerably just in the last four weeks.
It is so encouraging! It helps in
all areas of life to have others to push you along.
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