a wedding story

From the time I was old enough to question, I have had questions about the church. I have been a denomonation-hopper. I have been a Lutheran, an Episcopalian, and a charismatic. I have also been a nothing - rejecting the church completely. It was never about God, it was never about Jesus, it was the fucked up church. You have seen the bumper sticker:God save me from your followers. My father did his best to reassure me. Jesus called himself the great physician - meaning the church was a hospital full of sick people. Whatever. It was a small comfort because what I saw was hypocrites and phonies. Agendas. Selfishness.

Eventually, I made a hesitant peace with the church, but it still makes me angry. I am like the churchgoer in The Screwtape Letters; I am always focusing on the out-of-tune singing. When I happen across a televised church service from one of the big, prestigious downtown churches, I have found myself literally yelling at the television. The people are singing their hymns and they look dead. Nobody smiles. They sing: “Praise to whom all blessings flow” and they look like they are bored to death. I start to yell at them. “How much did your watch cost? How much was your Lexus?” I actually do this. I yell at the TV. I am pissed off. Standing in church, looking dead. “Where are you going and why are you in that hand basket?”, I ask the television. And I want to dump ashes on my head and stand in their midst. They are the church. And I am repulsed by them.

Which is why I do not have such a big problem with the whole Biblical concept that wives should submit to and respect their husbands. After fifteen years of marriage, I have learned the wisdom of this. Respect. I am called to respect my husband and to submit to him. Women complain about this all the time. I can not even count the women’s Bible studies and banquets and retreats I have been to that tried to deal with this command in a way that made it palatable. But while it is not easy, the command itself is not that problematic for me. What I have a hard time with is that the Bible goes on to say that I am like the church. I am like the church and my husband has to love me the way Christ loved the church. Strange that men never complain about this considering the way that women get so upset over submission. It seems so unfair. I have to submit to and respect him and in return he has to love me like Christ loved the church. The really, really fucked up church. The selfish, agenda driven, worshipping-everything-but-Jesus-lets-just-be-slappy-happy-clappy people and Shine Jesus Shine! church. The church I don’t even want to be associated with alot of the time. The church with its tendency to turn people off of genuine faith and love. That is what I am. In marriage, my husband is like Christ and I am the like the dysfunctional church.

I don’t want to admit this. I do not want this to be true. But then, I remember my wedding.

On the day of my wedding, nobody told me not to lock my knees. I had never heard that locking your knees could make you pass out. Evidently, they explain this to soldiers in basic training; they instruct them to stand with their knees slightly open so that they do not fall over in the heat and dust of duty. But I, not being a soldier of any kind, had never heard of such a thing. This is why, in the middle of my wedding, when I noticed that my knees were hurting from standing so still for the photographs and witnesses, my thought was not that I needed to unlock my knees. My thought was that I had better not fidget. So I stood even straighter, even taller. And slowly, I began to pass out.

I had never passed out before. It always seemed to me that fainting happened quickly. One minute you were standing there feeling fine - and the next you were waking up with smelling salts waved under your nose.

This is not how it happens.

The first thing I noticed was that everything started to get sparkly looking. The lights were sparkly - like streetlights through the car window in the rain. Then, the edges began to fade. Everything did not go dark at once, it faded in from the edges. My vision narrowed until I could only see a tiny pinpoint, a perfect circle. Then, everything went black.

And I, in the middle of my wedding, was not yet unconscious. I was still able to process this and wonder what was happening. What I thought, was that I had been struck blind. Incomprehensibly, in the middle of my wedding, I had gone blind. I wondered what I should do. I wondered if I should tell someone about going blind. I wondered if I should stop the wedding.

But then I had another thought. I would like to say that this was not really “me”, but was the lack of oxygen in my brain, that I was just disoriented and woozy. But I am afraid that the truth is that this moment is one that defines me as a wife. What I thought was that if I told everyone that I had gone blind that they would stop the wedding. If they stopped the wedding, my future-husband might rethink his willingness to marry a blind girl. On the other hand, if I just faked it till the end and kept my blindness a secret - he would be stuck married to me. In sickness and in health. That was what he was about to promise.

My decision to fake it is caught on film. I turn to hand my bouquet to the flower girl and you can see me sort of grope the air to find her. Trying to play it cool. Trying to impersonate a girl that can see. Shortly after that moment, I actually hit the floor and was laid out on a church pew until I regained consciousness.

I am not proud of this about myself. I am not proud of the fact that I was willing to force my husband unknowingly into marriage with a blind girl. That I considered my options and made a premeditated choice to deceive him. I am even less proud of the fact that, in many ways, my husband did unknowingly marry a blind girl. My literal sight returned after a few moments of unconsciousness, but the spiritual blindness that would cause me to make such a selfish decision and try to fake my way through the wedding stays with me.

I know that I am like the church. That he is like Christ. That I demand to be taken care of, to be tended to. My husband calls me “Princess”. It humbles me. I tell him that I do not understand why he gives so much when all I give in return is just the “glory of my wondrous presence”. He tells me that that is enough. I think back on all the years he worked so I could stay home and be with the children. I think of all the nights that he woke up and took care of the baby even though he was the one who would get up and go to work in the morning. I think of all the times he came home and found me still in my pajamas and how I was always sure that my life was the hard life.

I think of the Bible. I think of me being the church. I think of every moment that I am selfish and think of myself instead of thinking of Jesus. I think of my blindness. And I think that He still loves me. He still loves us. Ugly as we are, He still loves us.

After the wedding was over, I confessed to my husband that I had thought I was going blind. I expected him to be angry. He just laughed and said he only wished I had held on until after he kissed me to faint. That fainting after he kissed me would have been great.

And I think of myself, as the Bride of Christ. As I think of us as the Bride of Christ. Of the fact that He still loves us.

Knowing our selfishness. Knowing we are faking. Knowing our hearts.

He still loves us.

As we sing our psalms like dead people, as we let the collection plate pass us by.

He still loves us.

And He is waiting. He is hoping that we will hold on until His kiss.

Comments

[Heidi Renee]

Wonderful Amy! Happy, Clappy, Slappy church - made me laugh out loud.

[Robin M.]

I learned about not locking your knees in choir in fifth grade. The almost hard way. I sat down before I passed out, but just barely. The teacher gave us all a lecture. I still think she would have been nicer to me if I actually had passed out. I spent the rest of the weeks of preparation for whatever concert it was trying to make myself pass out, but I never did.

The end of this essay makes me catch my breath, even now, about the fifth time I've read it. I relate to the Jesus part and the husband part.

I think, really? Knowing everything he does about me and still waiting? For me? Wow.