A Letter

As I reflect upon your wedding day, I do not know what I will write or where the words will go. I pray my love would be as ink, my heart a letter that you may fold and carry as you go. If there is a single word that owns, the all of me, it is found in daddy, and so I write to you today with the sound of it resounding in my ear.

Children come to rest upon a fathers heart like dew that settles on a grass, with such soft stillness that neither grass nor heart know, that they have been consumed. They come like rain upon the surface of a lake and then vanish, water into water and in that moment, the lake can not define itself apart from the rain.

Like the lake and the rain, I do not know where you begin or where I end. I only know that you are here and that my banks are marked and embedded with who you are. There is a channel carved deep within my heart that carries the rain of every yesterday and leaves your water lapping, forever and gently, at my shores.

Fathers do not give away their daughters anymore than the lake gives back the rain, anymore than the grass gives back the dew. I think instead, a gracious God, provides another lake to hold the rain a father can not hold. A place for overflow to spill upon a husbands heart, to mark his banks, to carve a channel deep into his heart and to lap, forever at his shores. Today, as your rain prepares to fall again, all the yesterdays move across the surface of my lake and I hear them whisper, you are still, forever, daddy.

I wish today, that I could impart to you, the secret of a happy marriage, but, I haven't anything to give but what I have learned within the boundaries of my own.. Whatever else, I say of marriage, above all else, remember this; As I look back upon my life, marriage is the greatest place I've ever been. It did not come because of hope. It did not come of wish nor did it come of feeling. It came of promise and promise is the call upon your life today. I pray that what I've learned will help you pack for an extraordinary journey.

I've learned that the problem confronting every marriage is best veiwed when looking back into a mirror.

I've learned that a soul mate isn't the someone you find, it is someone you refuse to loose.

I've learned that marrying the right person is not nearly as important as becoming the right person.

I've learned that happiness doesn't come from who you marry, it comes from the harvest, grown from the seed, which you plant in the one you marry.

I've learned that time does not heal every wound. That is reserved for the ointment of forgiveness. Left to time alone the smallest wound will drain the very life from any marriage.

Finally, and at the heart of all that matters, I've learned that promise keeps the heart when winter comes upon your life. If there is a single idea with which to seed your heart, it is that feeling is always about itself, but promise is always about another . Feeling is a great impostor; It is forever whispering, but if you listen, it is always whispering about itself. Feelings are the leaves that decorate the tree. They dance with whatever wind will blow, but, promise is the root that keeps the tree and the tree that keeps will grow new leaves in spring. It isn't that feeling loved is unimportant, but, feeling loved begs too much from hearts that want more than they themselves can ever give. Getting will always pale in the light of giving.

The lake drinks from the giving of the rain and then, the rain itself becomes the lake. Marriage is a lake in need of an endless rain that gives until neither rain nor lake can ever see themselves again, unless looking in the other.

The marriage that last forever is born of promise that last forever. Born of rain that knows; endless giving brings communion, brings a vanishing, where neither beginning nor end is ever found again and brings endless love, lapping forever and gently at its shores.

If what I've written seems unfair, if it seems too much of the responsibility comes to bear upon who you are and what you do, then I have written well. Marriage is about the conquest of self and not the conquest of another. It is about the surrender of your own importance for the privilege of exaggerating someone else's. It is about enduring winters because you know that spring will come again. It is about letting love grow up and it is about a promise made, between the lake and the rain.

I have learned that the value of marriage, is in the end, worth the price which one is willing to pay. I can say of such expense, that I would pay all that I have to go again, this journey with your mother. If there is a truth uncovered by such a notion, it is simply this; The secret of a happy marriage is not a secret; It is the surrender of me for thee! It is the nature of rain to fall upon the lake, not until the lake is full, but until there is nothing more to give. Rain upon his lake, without measure and without count, until there is nothing left to give. After all, you simply fill the lake into which you, yourself, will vanish.

So, my Princess, I am here today, not to give away, but to witness the falling of a rain and the coming of a lake. I come to steal into the fabric of your heart and to leave there, a thread with which to weave a father's prayer.

I pray you will never turn from this journey; that you may know the length and breadth, the height and the depth of love that keeps a promise. I pray that this day, will be hammered out upon an anvil of faith and forged in a fire of resolve. I pray that right will never yield to the ever moving horizon which comes to flirt with feeling. I pray that forgiveness will always bathe your heart and wash from there whatever hurt would beg to stay. I pray that the love you have today, will trust the power of promise and bring you, in the end, an eternal spring.

Breathe the promise. Like a child within it's mother's womb, keep it ever close and somewhere along the way, I promise; Your heart will whisper across the surface of a lake. " I am water of your water. I do not know where you begin or where I end. I have searched and there is neither a beginning nor an end. There is only forever and I am there, even now".