GTT

Saturday evening, Father Chris Thomas and I co-officiated Alyssa and Steven’s wedding ceremony at The Artisan in Dallas, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:

Now, first and foremost, I want to tell you how hard it is to resist an obvious temptation and how proud I am that I did. In personal remarks at a wedding involving a Montague, I will not, I repeat, I will not invoke Shakespeare. That would just to be too obvious. I’m better than that, citizens of fair Verona.

The Talmud (the foundational book of Judaism) ponders the question of how two strangers meet and become one cohesive unit. Since this is so difficult to understand if you really think about, it imagines that forty days before the formation of the embryo, a heavenly voice decrees who your match will be.

When Steven describes his mindset towards finding his match, he echoes this concept: “I held on to the belief I would find the woman of my dreams. I knew God would send a woman to me. I just didn’t think it would be in Texas, LOL.” I feel like the rabbis of the Talmud would smile at that last part too.

Leaving the LOL aside, Texas has had a proud tradition of being the place where one can reinvent oneself and find new possibilities. And the Talmud does say that when one changes one’s place, one changes one’s luck.

The countless people who scrawled GTT, gone to Texas, when they left everything behind may not have known of the Talmud, but they were living out that idea. Today, amid futile calls to not California our Texas, more than 2,000 people a day are doing just that, and we are all better for it.

Drawing so many people to it, it is no surprise that Texas drew Alyssa back to it. Indeed, Alyssa says, “Something in my heart knew that I was waiting for someone when I moved ‘back home’ to Dallas.” So, following a life of cosmopolitan adventure on the high seas and in the air, (Well, the Air Force, at least) back she went.

Now, what transpired on their first date might surprise you. Steven is, shall we say, more colorful in his description:

“When I first met Alyssa – the first words out of her mouth – I could tell there was no faking; this is who she is. She came in a bit late, all in a huff. I asked what was wrong and she said her pup (Travis) took a big” – OK, I can’t really say what he wrote at a wedding; Alyssa called it an accident. Just use your imagination – “I said, ‘Well do you wanna talk about it?’ to which she replied, ‘Yea kinda!’, and I smiled at the situation and off we went into conversation.”

Alyssa says, “The poor guy had to listen to me vent about my dog. Luckily, he’s a dog owner too and totally understood the stress! I was impressed by his willingness to put aside the first date masks and just let me be honest about what I was actually feeling. We kept dating and I fell hard.”

The falling hard thing was mutual. Steven, who might want to take up poetry, describes it beautifully: “She’s my person. I feel it in my soul. She pushes me to be better. She accepts me for who I am. She doesn’t take any of my nonsense… We balance each other… I know I am safe with her. I know everything is going to be ok because I have her by my side. I really can’t put it into words. She makes everything better. How do you describe seeing a sunrise for the first time? Or seeing the ocean? Or looking up at the stars and seeing the night sky in all its glory. It’s magic. It’s surreal, it’s something that only you can experience. That’s what I see and feel when I look at her. When I hold her in my arms, I see the magic and wonder that is life.”

Alyssa shares these sentiments: “There are a million reasons I love Steve. Seriously, I started writing this paragraph about 87 times with a different quality to lead off. But really, the reason I want to marry him is because I trust him more than anyone I’ve ever known. I know beyond anything that we’re always in it together. I want to build a life with someone who makes me laugh, holds me when I cry, and most of all, always has my back.”