All Anybody Ever Wants

... is the person they love to love them back.   Just once; forever.

 

I went to a wedding today.  It's been a long while since I've gone to a wedding where the bride walks down the aisle to an anxiously awaiting groom.  I'm a Mormon, and in Mormon weddings the couple walk into the room filled with their families together, holding hands, like a force to be reckoned with, it's different, it's beautiful. It was thought-provoking for me today to see the aisle again though.

I was struck by how sweet the groom looked when he saw his bride for the first time.  They were adorably giggly.  They were shaky and fighting tears and looking very much in love. 

I didn't know the couple at all, I basically crashed their wedding, I was there with the photographer,  assigned to watch her stuff while she darted from one side of the room to the other trying to get as many angles of the sweet couple's profoundly moving moment.  Luckily a friend of mine happened to be a good friend of the bride, so I had someone to sit with.  During the ceremony she turned to me and said, "ya know, I never would have put those two together, but they work really well." 

Sometimes I think those end up being some of the best couples, the unexpected ones.

It was very evident that they were very much in love and very confident in their mutual choice to make a family of their own.  Most of the ceremony I watched her parents.  I like watching the bride's parents, their emotions are so pronounced.  The minister gave four pieces of advice: 

#1 "don't try and finish an argument before you go to bed if you're tired. It's foolish to think you can always go to bed happy and at peace with one another; save arguments for fresh minds and rested hearts." Her parents nodded gratefully. 

#2 "If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" (he got that from a bumper sticker). He then looked at the groom and said, "make her happy, always try to make her happy." Then he turned to the bride and said, "recognize what he does out of love to make you happy." Her dad's eyes started to fill up with tears as he nodded some more. 

#3 "Hang your marriage certificate on a wall between your bedroom and your children's bedrooms. Your commitment today to this marriage needs to be remembered at 2 am when you've cleaned up your child's throw up for the third night in a row while your spouse sleeps peacefully. Love them as much at that moment as you do in this moment." At this her mother lost it.

#4 "Replace all thoughts of 'I' and 'my' with statements of 'we' and 'our' because you are no longer your own." At this her parents looked at each other and her dad put his arm around his wife.  I almost lost it.

I like to believe that the parents' emotion came from the fact that their daughter is a product of their love for each other; and how they deeply want that love for their daughter and her groom because they know that she will be happier and stronger for it.

All anyone really wants is to give love and to receive love.  All anyone ever wants is to be someone's support and to have someone to be their partner, for better or worse.  We all really want the same thing, so when you find that special person who loves you as much as you love them.  That person who wants to make you happy because you make them happy, take care of them, take care of that relationship. 

As my friend Brittany always says, "a relationship that lasts forever lasts because you treat it differently.  You take care of it.  You make it work, even if at times you think you don't want to."

If you find someone who is willing to make something work, no matter what, hold on and make it work too because that is rare.