Engage!

In looking over my previous blog posts…I felt like I’ve been coming across as rather cold and academic…my posts appearing more like dissertations rather than the interesting vignettes and quick spiritual takeaways I intended. So I thought I would just try something a bit different and write about a very recent major life event. WARNING: this may seem totally random .

About a week after I wrote my dating treatise, the love of my life popped THE question…ironic considering I mentioned I my lack of knowledge about marriage in my footnote. It appears I will soon get to experience that, and for that I am very thankful. After a few days of blissful elation and a few OMG SQUEEE!!!11!!s from relatives, I realized I had to get down to brass tacks and start planning a wedding.

When I was single, it always seemed like when friends got married, they disappeared into the abyss. Of course, my lonely self would take it personally, bemoaning another friend biting the proverbial dust. While experiencing a constant stream of Facebook status changes, it was like my coupled friends were just being raptured, while I was left behind for the demons of self-criticism to torment my soul.

Now, I feel like I’m at the edge of a black hole, approaching the event horizon. I have come to understand where all the engaged people go. I always wondered why it seemed friends dropped off the face of the earth when they got engaged, and now I know why. All of a sudden, my weekends turn into venue tours, food and cake tastings, and vendor meetings. Since the engagement, I have not had my Sunday afternoon nap. My once cherished tradition of bedded bliss is turning into wedded bliss ;).  I have stayed up well into the night pricing out table linens, drooling over centerpieces on Pinterest, researching how to save money (Hint: you can’t, weddings are expensive as hell), calculating how much alcohol guests might drink, poring over fine print on vendor contracts, reading comments on wedding articles and feeling bad about myself compared to how much or how little others spend, and trying to minimize guest list bloat without causing permanent family strife.

As cute and froo-froo and sentimental as they are, weddings scare the crap out of me. It’s like Peter on the boat in the storm, trying to walk on water, and sinking. And getting up and trying get up and do it over and over again. While the thought of sharing your life with someone is bound to cause some jitters…that is not the most terrifying part for me. It’s the wedding itself. It’s navigating the desire for my princess day with my desire to just eff it all and elope. It’s the judgement that will inevitably befall whether I spend too much or too little (I will NEVER snark a wedding again!!). It’s trying to have fun and let go when my natural tendency is to flip my lid when one detail is not perfect.

The wedding has caused emotions and struggles I thought were dormant to percolate to the surface. When flung into a situation that is unfamiliar, it’s like standing on the house of sand…or worse…liquid water that ebbs and flows constantly. The ground under your feet does not feel solid. Sometimes the fear and decisions are overwhelming. You feel like a cornered animal, so coiled and poised to lash out or curl into fetal position.

Staring into the black hole suddenly warps your mind like a funhouse mirror. Thoughts that normally seem petty suddenly become appear larger than they should, while the rational voice of God becomes smaller. Emotions and struggles I thought were dormant to start percolating to the surface. I am flung into my hurtful past and then into the uncertain future, the gravity of the marriage black hole distorting time as I know it :-).

Within these depths, a Bridezilla is born…

However, black holes are not the horrible, evil things the world makes them out to be…black holes are massive gravitational forces that can change and shape the universe, just as this wedding will change the fabric of my life. They are not always destructive. God created them to pull galaxies together. Light gets sucked in, defracted, and who knows what else…but new light gets spit out anew from the center. Changes shape and renew us, even though they seem scary at the time. Yet like many famed vessels of science fiction, I must harness the power of this gravity and make it purposeful so it can propel me forward…at warp speed!