Reach Our Full Potential

Sunday evening, Father Bruce Nieli and I co-officiated Lauren and Rony’s wedding ceremony at the Hotel Van Zandt, in Austin, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Lauren and Rony met at UT and became very close platonic friends. Now none of us gets to choose how we meet our spouse, but if you manage to luck into this type of situation, it can make your future relationship incredible. As Lauren says, “I believe those years of friendship leading up to our relationship gave us a really solid foundation whenever we started officially dating, and it’s still something that’s so important in our relationship today.”

Here is where things get really interesting and go deep. Rony says, “Along the way… our relationship changed from platonic to romantic.” Why, because they deeply deeply care about each other. 

As Lauren says, “Rony… takes interest in my job, my friendships, what I did on my day off of work, etc. This may seem so basic, but as my friends have also grown and confided in me about their adult relationships, I’ve realized how valuable this really is. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a partner who takes an interest in their lives the way Rony does about mine.”

Rony agrees, “I love that Lauren and I communicate not only about the major things in life, but also the minor, seemingly inconsequential items, because we care about each other’s opinions and genuinely want the other to be intertwined in our lives.” Full disclosure: Rony did also mention something about realizing Lauren is out of his league and her not recognizing that, but don’t tell her.

Now, despite all of this, and even though they were clearly madly in love, Rony says, “Generally both of us had excuses for why we likely weren’t going to be in a long-term serious relationship together. Based on our spiritual and cultural upbringings… All the while, our friendship and romance continued to evolve, but we weren’t quite ready yet to set the excuses aside…”

Eventually, Lauren says, “We came to the conclusion that we’d rather be together and face the challenges that come with being an interfaith couple versus not being together.” Rony confirms this, saying, “Ultimately my feelings for Lauren got to a point where none of the ‘excuses’ mattered anymore – I just knew I wanted to be with Lauren.”

What a wonderful lesson for all of us in the fractured world that we live in today. Let us strive for a world where we all follow Lauren and Rony’s example, and not allow religion or culture or faith to stand between us, so that we may all reach our full potential.