Then and now…and every day in between…

Then…

and now….

Russ and I celebrated 34 years on Saturday.

We got married old school…cake and punch reception in the basement of the church.

And if you look closely at the cake  picture…taken professionally by a hired photographer…yes, not a snap shot but a paid photographer…you can see the clock just above our heads says 2:45.

We got married at 3:30…

And when we decided to get a quick photo before our celebration dinner, we didn’t even think about a cool Pinterest worthy background because….

there were a lot of much more important things going on <3

That’s how we started this thing and how we hope to finish and how we have tried to live 34 years of every day in between….

and I have to thank a wise pastor in a small church in Iowa who pulled us into his office the night before our wedding to have a chat.

Because Russ and I had basically planned the wedding and then at the rehearsal…out of nowhere, other people started expressing how they thought things should play out…culminating in the proclamation by my mother that I had picked the wrong color of candles.

Candles.

And all of sudden, what should have been a simple run through of the ceremony became a show down over …. the color of the candles….and I drew my line in the sand.

That’s when the pastor called time – out and pulled us in the office. He gently, lovingly and sympathetically said…”You two decide right now what is important to you. Stand your ground on that and let the rest of it go.”

Well…we chose to stick with our choice to break tradition and enter the church with both of our parents on either side…not popular…but important to us and I am still so thankful for the photos of both of us coming down the aisle with our moms and our dads walking with us…          and for the life of me..

I can’t remember what the color of the losing candles was….

And that’s the thing…the truth…every day…deciding what’s important..what matters…what’s worth fighting for…and what we can let go…