Stephenie is my amazing assistant and friend.  Today she’s getting married to her very own Steven.

 

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Dear Stephenie, 

This is the day that youth pastors live for.  We live for those rare moments when we watch God’s purpose stretch beyond the realm of potential and actually become reality. This day is possible because you said yes to His purposes before you could see them or feel them.  I’ve seen you wait and pray and plan and build.  I’ve seen you frustrated and lonely and faithful.  You’ve walked this season well and today? We celebrate!

 

 

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I know you, more than most, understand the truth about what a wedding is and isn’t. We’re not celebrating because this is the first day of a perfect life or because marriage somehow makes a person more worthy.  We celebrate because love – strong, sturdy love – is the stuff of God.  Real love defies the gravity of humanity’s sin and self-focus; it will be pressed by those things, but it doesn’t sink with them. In a culture of flash-in-the-pan success and one-night-stand romance, real love hunkers down for the long haul. It understands that the wedding is pretty but the lifetime is where all the power lies. Real love multiplies our ability to care and give and serve.  And when wispy, human love digs deep roots into the limitless love of God, that’s when we become both bigger and smaller than we ever dreamed we could be.   That’s when we discover that better and worse and richer and poorer and sickness and health are two sides of the same coin – a coin God can use to make us rich, no matter which face is showing. We find that our hearts are expanded beyond the breaking point and into the breakthrough point.  It doesn’t take long to realize that marriage is the laboratory where God does His best work on us, in us and through us…and also that sleeping together is just way better than sleeping alone.

 

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Steve and I love you and Steven more than we could ever say and we wish you both the most amazing day and remarkable life. May the beauty that brought you to this moment lead you every step forward.

Because of the One Who Loves and Loves and Loves, 

Bo 

 

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