I attended the wedding reception of my oldest friend today. We only see each other about once a year now, but met when we were four years old.

Her mother used to babysit me, and we bonded immediately because we were the only girls in the house and both thumb-suckers until at least age 7.

I found myself more emotional at this wedding than I have been at any I have ever attended.

Maybe it's the passage of time, maybe it was my stunning redheaded friend standing in front of me in a sparkling white dress. Maybe it's remembering all the times we used to take pillowcases, put them over our hair, walk down a fake aisle and pretend to be brides...mothers...wives.


I'm getting all weepy just typing it.


This morning in the car I was listening to the Focus on the Family broadcast--they were celebrating Jim and Shirley's 50th anniversary. They played a clip of the prayer said (by Dr. Dobson's father) at Dr. Dobson's wedding,
and I just wanted to post it because, well, I'm feeling pretty sentimental.

O eternal God: We bring Thee our children, They were Thine but Thou in love didst lend them to us for a little season: to care for, to love and to cherish. It has been a labor of love and has seemed but a few days because of the affection we bear them. Fresh from Thy hand they were, in the morning of our lives. Clean and upright, but yet two separate personalities. Tonight we give them back to Thee–no longer as two–but as one flesh. May nothing short of death dissolve the union here cemented. And to this end let the marvelous grace of God do its perfect work!

It is also our earnest prayer for them, not that God shall have a part in their lives, but that He shall have the preeminent part; not that they shall possess faith, but that faith shall fully possess them both; that in a materialistic world they shall not lie for the earthly and temporal alone, but that they shall be enabled to lay hold on that which is spiritual and eternal.

Let their lives together be like the course of the sun: rising in strength, going forth in power and shining more and more unto the perfect day. Let the end of their lives resemble the setting of the sun: going down in a sea of glory, only to shine on undimmed in the firmament of a better world than this.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

To listen to Friday's Family Talk broadcast:

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/family-talk/