On Friday, November 18th, Minister Joseph Devlin and I co-officiated Janelle and Chris’ wedding ceremony at The Club at Garden Ridge in Garden Ridge, Texas. Here are the remarks I shared with them and their guests:
Janelle’s first thoughts about Chris, before she actually met him are, um, interesting: “I initially thought I don’t know, this dude looks like a major hippie, but it says he’s a therapist so he must be a pretty good person. I guess I’ll give him a shot, haha.” Low bar, but OK!
Chris describes what she didn’t know at that point but would bring them together: “Janelle and I have both taken our knocks from life to this point. We can both attest to profound experiences of hurt and isolation and a disappointing experience of trying to find love and connection… I feel that God wrote a hell of a harrowing story for us both and that we were meant to find each other now when we did.” Wow, pretty deep major hippie!
I always ask couples to tell me about themselves as individuals and as a couple and to tell me about their spirituality. With Janelle and Chris, the subjects are intertwined. When I asked Janelle why she wanted to marry Chris and why now, she answered in spiritual terms:
“Chris is the sweetest, most caring, thoughtful, funny, smart goofball I’ve ever met. He is my twin soul and completes me in every way. He’s the Yin to my Yang. His philosophical approach to everything balances my hard science approach… He brought me back to God and made me believe again. Because only God could have created a soul so perfect for me and influenced the random sequence of events that allowed us to meet at the time, I was finally ready for him. It took 32 years and a lot of tears and tough times, but I would go through it all again to find Chris.”
Chris speaks in similar terms: “I feel it’s the right connection every time we laugh together or build a new goofy inside joke (our lives are already filled with these), or in moments where it feels like we’re really able to understand each other, or in moments where we’re able to be doing mundane stuff but feel enhanced by the mere presence of the other person.
We both feel like this marriage is an invitation to a bigger and better layer of life, where we have a renewed focus on giving and sharing love… It feels like God has rolled out the red carpet for both of us to be living the lives we’re meant for, and that that path for me is named Janelle.”
Wow, I really can’t add to that.
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