Love at its deepest is silent, I think. Because often when I look at Nicholas and see who he truly is, my heart is full but my mouth is empty. But if Love Himself is the Word, my love for my husband is indeed spoken, just not in a way that the ear can detect.
My husband. On September 24th, I awoke to a crisp blue day on the island. My mother and sisters transformed me into a bride, and my father made me feel like a princess, as he has since I was small. Arriving a half hour late to the basilica (ahem, it’s a tradition in my family to rarely arrive on time), I could have skipped up the aisle to take the hand of my beloved. Indeed, from beginning to end, I was filled with such a light that it’s a wonder my fingertips and the end of my nose did not glow.
In the week prior, my family flew to the island and kidnapped me, and I quite happily did not resist. We cozied up in a cottage by the river, ate seafood late at night (chatted even later), sipped Apothic Red, canoed against the current, folded at least a hundred and twenty paper sailboats, picked crimson apples and bare branches in a misty drizzle, and watched our love for each other ripen in this new season of life. Families are the best. I cannot doubt that marriage is a gift from God when I see the fruit that my parents cultivated by saying yes to each other and yes to children. I see the same fruit in Nicholas’s family.
On our wedding day, we were blessed to be showered not only in the love of our families but also in that of our many friends. Was it only the excitement of a bride—or was there something more that made the day as beautiful as it was? I believe it was the sense that Heaven was celebrating with us.
Such joy to embrace your beloved freely, knowing that everyone who loves you is embracing him with you. Such joy to embrace him totally, knowing you’ve waited to give yourself to him and he to you . . . Indeed, when I awoke in the middle of the night to find his arms still around me, his wedding band glinting in the dark, my heart could have burst—because I knew I belonged to him and he to me. We were now one. Are one.
Here are a few pictures from the incredible day that the Lord gave us:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/DeniseMallettAuthor/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1770511683229498