in the weeks following our wedding, Jarronn and i had the chance to run into many of the people who had attended the ceremony and reception. so many of them had nice things to say about the day. how the venue was beautiful. how the food was great. how the dj was on point. how the deer came out of the woods to watch the ceremony, seemingly right on cue.
but more than anything, people commented on our vows. how touching they were. special. amazing.
on most occasions, people seemed to give more attention to Jarronn's vows than mine. this was even the case during the ceremony, when people darn near shouted "amen" and broke out into applause as he read them to me.
Jarronn's vows were amazing. and i understood that hearing a man make a declaration like the one he made was something people don't often hear. but in some ways, i felt like i had missed an opportunity to write and share more in my vows (which i kept short only because Jarronn begged me to). that i had missed the chance to display in front of our beloved family and friends how dedicated i was.
it may seem silly, but my insecurity about this caught up with me one day when we were at home. and after i heard yet another person go on and on about Jarronn's vows. i told Jarronn about how the situation bothered me. at first he brushed it off, telling me not to think about it. but when he could see i was genuinely upset, he made me stop what i was doing, grabbed me by the shoulders, and gave me a talking to.
he told me that my vows were perfect, and that he was the only person whose thoughts mattered. he told me that even though he wrote vows that people thought were eloquent, i was right in acknowledging that much of the fuss had to do with him being a man. and he went on to tell me how he and one of our groomsmen, lennox, had a conversation in which lennox told him, "you and jessica said some really great things up there. it all sounded really good. but now it's time for you to put your words into action." (i loved the fact that my husband surrounded himself with other wise, married men). Jarronn reiterated to me that in the end, the words didn't matter if we couldn't look back years from now and see that we had done the things we'd vowed to do.
and at that point, i was so impressed with, and so thankful for, how much he got it.
it reminds me of something one of Jarronn's rutgers friends reminded me of in a message she sent me a few weeks ago. she told me she spoke to Jarronn in the week before he passed and then had a conversation with her husband about one of Jarronn's facebook status updates that said, "love is a verb." i think it was something we had heard in church.
regardless of where it came from, i'm so glad that Jarronn loved actively. that he backed his words up with action. that i was on the receiving end of those acts.
In my simple opinion, your vows to each other were synergistic, it was as though you wrote them together, you could almost alternate the paragraphs. He'd lead, you'd follow, he'd do his best, you'd do your best. You were both very real for good times and bad times, he might fail you but he'd check himself, you'd try not to be hard on him but see the best in him. My love of your blogs are yours and his inter-digitation (is that a word?). You write from his and YOUR perspective. You were BOTH blessed and you will continue to have great love in your future, when you give this kind of love, you can only get this kind of love. Keep pressing forward ... slowly but surely
ReplyDelete