Last weekend, Steve and I packed up our munchkins and met up with some friends in Toronto.  With five little kids in tow, we hit up the zoo and a full day of overwhelming excitement!  It was apparently also the day that Hudson would fall head over heels for a little girl named Brooklyn!!!  For hours on end, they held hands as we roamed the grounds of the zoo…stopping every now and then to make sure that the rest of the troops weren’t far behind.  It was a sad moment when we had to say our goodbyes…but promises were made to reunite again – and with that – I get asked on a daily basis if that time has come!

It was both adorable and startling to watch my son be so smitten.  To know that a time will come when this sort of relationship will mean something totally different and the result will impact so many lives.  Even lives that have yet to exist…

As strange as it may sound, I often pray for the future spouses of my children.  I pray for their health…their well-being…their gentleness of heart.  I pray for their families…their friendships…their love of God.

My own life has been changed so drastically through the blessing of marriage.  When I consider that God managed to reach down through all of the clouds and the chaos…and bring the two of us together…it’s almost impossible for me not to pray for these things.  To want – with every fiber of my being – for my own children to experience the same thing.

So, I pray for them.  Those little people who might just be taking their first steps right now…or bestowing on the world their very first little giggle.  Those little people who might live a world away or just at the end of our block.  Those little people who might not even have started their lives yet…

When I stood with Liane and Ryan to photograph their wedding, I began to realize that their day…looked a lot like my prayers.  Two people; so in love with each other…so in love with God…so in love with the future they were about to create.  Two people; perfectly imperfect…yet perfect for each other.  Two people; plucked from the chaos of the world so that they – together – could make that very same world a better place.

And that’s the thing about Liane and Ryan…just being around them makes everything better and brighter and lovelier.  We are all better people for knowing them…for being in a room with them…and for sharing a piece of this amazing relationship with them.  That’s just how beautiful it all is.  Their love…their union…their commitment, is worth a lifetime of prayers.

Liane and Ryan, you are both too wonderful for words.  You’re too wonderful for me to express in such a small space and you’re too wonderful for the world to contain one place.

But please know this…one day – when I’m watching my own children get married – I will think of you and I will know that this is what I’d been praying for all along…

xoxo