When Wedding Bells Sound Like Hell's Bells

There's this 'special' thing that tends to happen when you enter your mid to late twenties: ALL your friends start to get married.

Not only do all your friends start to get married in your mid to late twenties, but they also seem to all start to get married at the same time. First, it's just one friend is engaged, and you have a wedding in July, and then, the next thing you know, all your friends are engaged and you have a wedding every other weekend from April until September. Wedding bells are nice, but sometimes when they ring too much, they can begin to sound like Hell's Bells.

If there were a world record for number of weddings attended in one day, I think I could've at least tied it this past weekend. Within a span of 10 hours, I attended three (count em') THREE weddings in three different cities. I don't know what it was about the day of April 16 this year, but apparently, if you didn't get married on that day, you didn't do your wedding right. 

Each wedding I went to was great, and each one was beautiful and creative in its own sense. I saw three great friends and family members tie the knot, and I couldn't be happier for the newly-wed couples I call my friends and what their relationships symbolize. I know it may sound like from above that I may be a wedding snob full of jealously that friends are getting married, but I'm not. I'm just battling for the first time another reality of adulthood that most all young adults battle at some point and that's the battle of watching other friends take another step forward toward adulthood that you haven't taken yet.

It's a weird battle and it's a weird feeling to watch friends that are the same age as you (or younger) get older and mature in ways that you can't yet know. I was never really one to believe that weddings were all that emotional for people other than the bride, groom and their families, but now I believe they are, and not just for the reasons you may first think. Yes, weddings are happy, joyful celebrations of two lives coming together as one, but they're also life events that mark significant change and progression in ones' lives. They show two individuals who are no longer clinging to their parents, but that are instead clinging to each other. The slideshows rolling by on the screens show the couples as they once were from days before they knew one another with photos of old friends and memories while those friends from those old memories stand and watch as their friends take the next step forward out of those old memories. 

It can be sobering, it can be nostalgic, and in some ways, it can even be painful. 

Weddings are amazing and beautiful experiences where memories are made and new journeys start for young couples, but when you're in your mid-twenties and everyone you know seems to be starting out on those new journeys except you, take heart. You're not alone, and there is plenty of time ahead for your own journey with that special someone to start. If you're young and wedding bells are starting to sound more like Hell's Bells, listen more closely. Listen to the joy of your friends and their families as they celebrate, listen to the laughter as you reflect on old stories you get to share with friends you haven't seen in five years and listen to the music as you dance your feet of at the wedding reception. Weddings are celebrations for couples, not funerals for singles. Listen close, and you'll begin to hear it. 

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: Weddings are celebrations for couples, not funerals for singles.  

The Day We Turned Jesus' Birthday Into Our Own

May 15th is a special day; it's my fiance's birthday. This year, I already have in mind what I'm going to do to celebrate with her. This year for her birthday, I'm going to take her fishing. She doesn't really like fishing all that much, but I think it will still be a good time. We can have some good conversation while we're waiting for the fish to bite, and I can give her some nice compliments and tell her how beautiful she always looks while we're sitting there. It should be a great time. . . for me. 

I like to fish, and in reality, if I were to really take her fishing for her birthday, she'd be pretty upset with me because:

1) she doesn't like to fish all that much
2) going fishing would be more for me than it would be for her
and
3) it's her birthday, not mine

When it comes to birthdays, it should always be more about celebrating the other person and doing what they want to do, rather than celebrating and treating their birthday like it's your own birthday. Birthdays should be times of selfless celebration of someone else. In my fiance and I's case, celebrating her birthday would look more like me taking her shopping, then out to a nice dinner followed by some spontaneous, adventurous activity. I would want to celebrate it in a way that was best for what she wanted, not what I want.

I feel like Christians, myself included, struggle with this same issue when it comes to celebrating Christmas, aka: Jesus' birthday. When it comes to celebrating Christmas, we try to turn it from His birthday into our own birthday just like Jesus turned water into wine. We easily become wrapped up in how we want to celebrate His birthday, more so than how He would want us to celebrate His birthday. It's so easy to take Christmas and turn it into our own party. We become obsessed with what we want, getting all our shopping done and what foods we're going to eat. None of these are bad things, but at the same time, they're things that become more about celebrating us than Him on His day. We become content with going to a service on Christmas Eve and saying a family prayer before the big meal, and then we're good to go. It bothers me just how much I've removed Christ from Christmas, as cliche as that sounds. 

When it comes to Christmas this year, I want to be able to slow down enough to put into practice the answer to the question: How would Jesus want want His birthday celebrated?

I think Jesus would want His birthday celebrated by us serving others, just as He came and served us. He came and "though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, by taking the form a a servent, being born in the likeness of man" (Phil. 2:6-7).

This Christmas, try to remember that you aren't celebrating your birthday; you're celebrating His. Try not to get wrapped up in how perfect you want everything, and instead get wrapped up in delighting to be a servant to those around you. 

Have a Merry Christmas Eve, everyone!

-Cliff

Cliff's Note: Don't be that guy that tries to turn someone else's party into your own.