So today I was at my cousin’s wedding – a stylish and vintage affair, complete with the Volkswagon van for a wedding car and dinner at a retro restaurant furnished with old school furniture.
I love being at weddings – the celebration of love, romance and passion. Of course my favorite part has always been “You may now kiss the bride”.
It also so happens that this wedding is also the second wedding since I got attached. And from the perspective of being in a relationship aimed towards marriage, the quote, “(Marriage) is not by any to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly; but reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God”, suddenly carries more weight than I previously understood.
In my late teens, my parents took on pre-marital counseling for couples who wanted to get married in my church. Some couples got married after that, others separated. My parents also counseled couples whose marriages needed some encouragement and affirmation – wrecked by many years of bitter words and distance, these marriages often reminded me that the wedding was only for a day, but the marriage is for life.
One evening, my boyfriend picked up Dr Gary Chapman’s book on love languages and casually read a sentence from the book. In gist, it was a reminder that it is pure bliss to be loved and to love someone. But the real test is when we do not feel like loving, but choose to love nonetheless.
It is a really scary thing to decide to give my life to a till-death-do-us-part commitment and to love even when I have to move out of my home, or to pay the bills, or to iron his clothes, or to spend the weekends cleaning the house, or to wipe baby poop. The scariest part is, I cannot really tell from this chapter of our journey, if the rest would be smooth-sailing.
But I think the assurance in the possible leap of faith into marriage, would not only be the certainty of a man who would love for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, but also because God first loved us, His grace abounds and His mercies are new every morning – so we can choose to love daily.
The “you may now kiss the bride” feeling may evaporate, but kiss anyway. I doubt the feelings will always be the same. Instead, they grow with the seasons. My mum once told me, “I love your father more now than when we first got married.”
That is how I know that love is not just a feeling. Love is a verb.
Set Forth 
And I love your mother more than when we first got married, too!
Dad