The Adventure in the Here and Now

Yesterday evening Deacon Sam Dell'Olio and I officiated the wedding of Stephanie and Dan at Agave Road in Katy, Texas. Here are the personal remarks I shared with these two rocket scientists (seriously!) and their guests.

So, when a couple first calls me to ask if I might be able to officiate their wedding, I always ask them to first tell me about themselves. Stephanie's initial answer was short and to the point, "I run the International Space Station, and Dan trains astronauts to go up to it." Wow. Many more of us today than in the past, are lucky to work in jobs we enjoy and find fulfillment in, but this sounded above and beyond.

Now, beyond the fact that these two are scary smart rocket scientists, how did they pull this off? How did they get to where they are in life? Well, I detect in Stephanie and Dan something that all of us should cultivate: an uncompromising passion to follow their dreams, and a belief that those dreams could come true.

Stephanie and Dan separately each had the drive to pursue a vocation that few of us could imagine. They each resolved to follow that dream, and follow it they did.

Now, this dream come true led to them meeting. And when they barely started going out, a friend remarked to Stephanie that she, Stephanie, would marry Dan one day. Stephanie said, "You never know..." Smash cut to today, Stephanie and Dan are together fulfilling another dream.

I think that many of us have the potential to fulfill our dreams in our professional and personal lives. All too often we put them off for a later time. At that undefined amorphous time, we will go on great adventures, and our dreams will come true.

The valuable lesson that Stephanie and Dan teach us is that it need not be that way. THIS can be IT. The adventure can be the here and now, if we just allow ourselves to follow our dreams.