The Happiest Day of Yo...

I saw an engagement party photo today. There was a plaque that read, Our Love Story. First Day, Yes Day, and Best Day, as in a couple's first date, the date the couple got engaged, and the wedding date. I stopped scrolling and considered it and couldn't help but be reminded of these dates in my own relationship. I could tell you those dates with ease. I remember them because, yes, they're monumental. They're important. Totally plaque-worthy, sure. What gave me pause, what made me stop in my tracks and stare in a bit of shock for a moment was one word, and it was the word best.

Because while I understand that so many people have lovely memories of their wedding days, I don't. I wouldn't even call it a good day. For me, it was stressful—a hurdle to jump over so I could live my life.

First, Yes, Best

Honestly, very little about the day was pleasant. You know how people say on their wedding day they look at their spouse and he/she is all they see? I have no idea what that experience is like. Not even a little bit.

We all have holes in our knowledge, right? There's an entire episode of How I Met Your Mother dedicated to it. Well, when we were engaged and entangled in all the fitful decisions that go along with planning a wedding, he said multiple times, "Let's just go to the courthouse." I thought he was joking. This was the hole. I thought respectable people had big weddings, period. So everyone can see that the bride isn't knocked up or shacking up. So everyone knows that she's doing things the right way. It's a spectacle you have to put on for everyone else, because what everyone else thinks is what really matters.

Oh, such a gaping hole.

Like so many other times in my life, if I had just listened to my man, things would have been so much easier. Better. We should have gone to the courthouse. We should have eloped. We should have hired a minister and asked someone to stand next to us and gotten the ceremony of the day over with so we could begin our lives. But even still. Even it had been a romantic occasion without people screaming in my ear that I had gone over budget and "That just doesn't look good," and "Look at my hair, it's falling out because of the stress your wedding is causing me!" If I didn't have to deal with any of that at all, it still wouldn't have been the best day. Nope. Not at all. 

I can think of some days—the one where we discovered we were going to have a daughter. The day we first heard our son's name announced as the pitcher for his high school baseball team. The day the stove was on, and the 9x13 glass casserole dish that was sitting on a burner exploded, covering our kitchen with chunks that looked like Sonic ice and embedding shards into the linoleum, between the appliances, and in the skin on my arms. That was the day that spurred the kitchen refurb we had been putting off for so long. We had to rip up the floor and clean places we had never seen, and we did it together. In the end, it was better than before. We were better than before. Looking back, that was an excellent day.

There are so many of those best days. Some of them, it was just the two of us. Okay, a lot of them. And yes, they all top that wedding day. That was just the day it all began. To me, calling the wedding day the "best" day begs the question: If the first day of any journey is the best day, then is that journey even worth taking?

There's another day I'm reminded of by this plaque. The day I succumbed to the pressure of the subculture surrounding me and was dunked in the baptistry by our preacher. I was twelve and had one thing on my mind: the attention I was to receive afterward. I got it. So many people hugged me that night. They said they were proud of me. I had fond memories for a while of that day, but it had nothing to do with salvation, or remission of sins, or the resurrection. Actually, I hadn't even talked to God about it. That ceremonious act was between me, the minister, and the acceptance I so desperately craved. 

Then came the day I realized what I had done, three years later. So, there were these people. I don't remember their names and I can't describe what they looked like. All I remember was a cute head of curly blonde hair on a girl and the other girl was dark-headed. The boy with them was taller, and that's where the memories end. But the way they treated me... not only will I remember it, it changed the trajectory of my life. They treated me like I was a person. Like I mattered. I didn't understand why. I had just met them. But all three of them, for whatever reason, treated me like a friend for the weekend we were together. Did I mention we were at a choir event where students from across the state came together for one performance? One performance, one weekend, a one-time shot to make an impression on someone, and these three did. I never saw them again, but they changed me.

They were my age, yet so kind. So warm. So Christian. And I was not. I realized that that was what I wanted to strive to be. Like Jesus. I have asked God who they were. Were they angels? Maybe they were just nice highschoolers in a world full of cruel ones, but to this day I wonder if they were angels. Even if they weren't, it was by the providence of God that I encountered these three, because it hit me that I needed Jesus in my life, and the way to do that was to join him in his death, burial, and resurrection—to be a new creation in Him.

And so I told my parents I needed to be baptized. I didn't ask. Their response? "You already were baptized." My response? "No, I wasn't."

I remember the bathtub. I remember my dad being so careful to make sure I went all the way under. I remember asking him to leave afterward, because I needed to be alone with my creator. I remember silently sitting in awe of what God had done until the water was cold. Yes, that was a good day. But still, it was not the best day. 

It was just the beginning of my relationship with Him, and I have grown more intimately connected with Him since then, experiencing revelation after revelation about what He has rescued me from and how He has provided. He has made it abundantly clear that I am anointed and chosen as His own. That He was with me in the valley of my childhood and pulled me out of it with His almighty hand, and that no one else would ever be strong enough to do such a thing. You could try to tell me that it doesn't work that way, but Ephesians 2:10 and 2 Timothy 1:9 tell me otherwise.

Seeing my creator, the king of all, work in my life, knowing he hears me. Knowing he loves me and seeing that love communicated—those are the best days. The day I made the commitment to him was just the beginning, just like the day I made the commitment to my husband was only the beginning. And at the beginning of anything, shouldn't we have the hope that the best is yet to come?

I still have that hope, and I hope you do, too.