How A Wedding Taught Me to Trust

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

We wake up early, and she wriggles with excitement when I hug her good morning. "It's today!" I say, and a smile escapes from her eyes and her mouth and she's grinning like crazy. Today, this beautiful woman, who I have known from days at Chop't and wandering through Old Town Alexandria, who tells me over and over that I am beautiful, that she loves me, who makes me tea lattes and walks to the WWII Memorial with me to explore our hearts and to laugh as we trip over the curb and say, "Good afternoon!" to a police officer at 8pm - she is getting married.

We eat half a bagel and the air around us feels light. It hums with some kind of excitement, some kind of energy that I haven't felt before. I look out at the light grey sky, watching as the breeze slinks between the trees and the passion fruit growing above the porch sways. She sweeps her hair over her shoulder as she gazes around her, a smile on her face. I look down at our feet, coral toes against the clean white kitchen tiles. It seems like just yesterday she was whispering into the phone all her love for this man, how it was growing, how she thought, yes, I want to marry him. And from those small words, that seemed so very unreal, so far from what might be possible, she is here, her bare feet grazing the floor, her brown eyes crinkled in laughter and I realize it: this is what it looks like to trust Him.

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

She disappears for a little while, to get her hair curled and braided and to put on the bronze and gold eyeshadow that makes her brown eyes glow. Her dad runs out to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to buy hazelnut lattes, and I remember how on my first visit to California we curled up in chairs and talked about our futures, and the world, and how we didn't know what was next, but we dreamed about it, about getting back to DC and laughing and seeking the truth. And she reminded me then, that He will surely do it (her favorite verse from Thessalonians), and I reminded her that we must be strong, and take heart, and wait for the Lord (my favorite verse from Psalm 27). And we planted seeds of our own love of Him in each other.

And as I straighten my hair, watch as its red glints catch the rising sun through the bathroom window, and hum a few bars of their song - "Somewhere Only We Know" by Keane - I shake my head and think about the journey: the surprises of love, how none of us would have predicted or believed that we would be here. But we are here, and she is looking in that mirror about to walk down that aisle, and I see the trust in her delight.

I'm humbled by it. Delight comes from trust. Not from knowing the next steps, the perfect plan. Not from being certain, but from laying her life in His hands and saying yes to love, yes to hope, yes to the unlikely promises. The prayers of "what next, Lord?" the humble us and bring us to our knees. And this morning, I look into my own eyes and I sneak a peek of her in the mirror, as she gets ready to become married, and I long, suddenly, to trust Him like she does. To let that kind of pure delight wash over me, and fill me up. To let her be the example, today on this most glorious, unexpected, and beautiful day of the beauty that comes from the heart that trusts Him. 

(photo: Jessica Fairchild)

So I slip into the purple dress and slip into delight, too. And I watch this beautiful woman, full to the brim with love, get married. The bridesmaids and I marvel at her, at the sun that bursts over the courtyard just as the ceremony begins, and the slight wind that almost seems to tell us that yes, the blessing is real.

So I watch her, with all of my heart, and I speak the words of my toast to the room, about the surprises of love. And I realize that this is a surprise for us all: that in two people who get married on a Sunday in August is hidden the example of delight.

And I'm so glad that I know her, that she pours out her heart and lifts it up, and reminds me, always, to do the same.

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
         Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
  Delight yourself also in the LORD,
         And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
  Commit your way to the LORD,
         Trust also in Him,
         And He shall bring it to pass.
 He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light,
         And your justice as the noonday. 

Love, 

Hilary 

(Photo: Jessica Fairchild)

when it rains, sometimes it pours (about beauty)

This morning I woke up to rain. It presses against the glass, against tree branches, slides along the pavement and through the sand of the volleyball court outside my building. I hear it crash against the edges of the road as cars drive by, and there is a steadiness, even an insistence, about it this morning. When it rains, they say, it pours.

Yesterday the word beautiful poured into my day, across the floor at breakfast in Gloucester, followed me around shopping at the mall, crept up over my shoulder at coffee and then meandered down the tamed (but still a little bit wild) paths around Gull Pond. Everywhere I went, this question - "what do we do with 'beautiful'?" asked itself. And, young as I am, uncertain as I am - I want to run outside in the rain of this question and laugh, delightedly.

What do we do with beautiful? 

I ask this because I feel uncertain about it. Because I look in the mirror some days, and feel like there's nothing too special there. And for so long, I wore the makeup and the clothes and the headbands to hide that question - am I beautiful? - underneath all the things I thought might make me that way. And yesterday, as two beautiful friends sat across from me drinking cappuccino and walked next to me to the dock, they both wanted to know: how did you give up makeup?

I smiled. "Honestly?" I began, and they nod, looking at me from beneath shimmering eyelids and bright cheeks. "I gave it up because I was dependent on it. I didn't know my face without it. I didn't like my face without it." And I tell them about the days when I reached for my eyeshadow and when I longed to slide the black pencil under my eyelids, just for a hint of drama, just to get someone to pay a little bit more attention to me. I tell them how it made me wonder, drew me right in to ask the question of the One who made me: So, God, am I beautiful?

And His answer is a fierce and loud and forever Yes. A Yes to being beautiful even when I'm not sure of it. Even when the guys I hope will notice me don't. Even when I am full to the brim with a hundred reasons that I shouldn't think of myself that way. He says I am beautiful, and sets my heart straight again.


What do we do with beautiful?

(photo: hannah byrnes)

We live it. We wake up in the morning and stretch our bodies into the world. We marvel at the faces we meet, how eyes carry our selves, and the smile betrays the laughter, and the way they walk reveals how much joy they have. We marvel at how expressive we are, how our hands paint the air with words and ideas, how we move, how our lungs breathe and how our heart muscles beat.

And we laugh, so loudly and run through the rain that pours into our lives and hear Him say Yes, and hear His delight, and then find others, who ask the question, who worry about it, who wonder if they are beautiful - and we remind them.

Love,
Hilary

what we offer (lifting up our hearts)

I haven't been to church in a few weeks. A wedding here, a hurricane there, my own head and heart running away from Him also in the midst of the beginning of school... and here I am, standing in front of the altar. It is the same morning service I've always known, the Rite I, the old elegance. I can recite all the words, eyes closed. I'm in the midst of doing so, when my eyes suddenly snap open.

The words ring out bright and harsh in the early light: Lift up your hearts.

(photo: mandie sodoma)

He wants me to lift up my heart to Him.

I avoid this command. I hold out my heart - to my friends, to the written page, to strangers sometimes. I anxiously offer it to others, asking them to hold it a while, but when have I lifted it up out of my own ribcage into the hands of the One who made it?

I keep a close watch on my heart. I watch each small pinprick - of silence, or of a harsh word, of a disappointed expectation. I make a silent list of the things I don't have (boyfriend, certainty, a plan, a size 0 waist, boundless energy, an abundance of words). I go for a walk with a dear professor and find myself saying, "It's like I'm trying to shove Him out of my heart! Like I'm saying, 'Go on! Get out of here! You won't give me what I want! You won't show me the way!'"

I have been offering God just about everything except my heart. I offer my schoolwork, my ideas, my work. I offer up my plans. I offer up my prayers, my time. I do my Bible studies and read my devotionals. But my heart?

(photo: mandie sodoma)

That I withhold. That I say, no, you can't come in here. I keep the door locked, whispering that I know my own heart better than He could, that He doesn't understand, that He can have all of the external parts of me, but I'd like to keep the life-blood, the alive-ness, the quivering and shockingly beautiful heart to myself.

But this morning, it's my heart He asks for. Not my schedule. Not my money. Not my plans.

He asks me for my self.

He reminds me of what I promised in journal pages in the midst of winter - I will trust in You and Your unfailing love, and I will give You my whole life, my whole self, my heart. It is Yours, O Father, and I ask that Your make Your presence felt there. You promised that You are with us always, and I trust Your promises. 


So I make the reply: we lift them up unto the Lord. 


I take my heart, and all its worries, and all its waiting, and lift it up in my small hands.

(photo: mandie sodoma)

And at just that moment, when all the walls have come down and I shiver to know that I'm giving it up to be transformed, I catch a glint of light caught in the stained glass window. It winks and dazzles, and I hear my heart remember - When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8.12)


Love,
Hilary