August 23 – “Pretty cool wedding guests”

We ventured into a whole new realm of experience yesterday.  We took Freddy shopping with us.  Well, actually she took us shopping with her.  We went to Pets Mart to get her a new harness.  It was all part of our pre-hurricane possible evacuation planning.  Even though it doesn’t look like Megastorm Megan, the Fujiwhara effect monster storm of the century (but just the next ho-hum of 2020) will come into existence after all, we are still inside the cone of uncertainty for both of the approaching tropical storms.  And they both have the potential to grow into actual hurricanes with the nice 90 degree bathwater we have in the Gulf right now.  We also made a quick stop at WalMart to get a few more plastic evacuation tubs to put photo albums in.  Good thing that’s all we wanted.  The place was packed to the gills with Saturday shoppers.  Surprising that so many were in there, since the beaches were wall to wall people as well.  We noticed they were out of bottled water, so I suppose there was some hurricane preparedness already happening.  But we got all we needed and I guess we are ready for whatever happens to come our way. 

 

We had to rescue Cailyn on our way home.  Well, I’m not sure if the rescue was for Cailyn or their dogs.  She spent the night at a friend’s house, but when she went home to take care of the dogs she discovered all the doors locked.  We have a spare key, so we let her in and the dogs were happy to see her. 

 

Last night I did a wedding on the beach.  Very small affair, maybe ten people.  Pretty sweet young couple, though.  The groom stopped me ahead of time and asked again (we had already talked several times) if the ceremony was going to be pretty short.  I assured him my part wouldn’t take long.  They wrote their own vows, and he assured me that they only took about a minute and a half.  So it was with totally assured pastor and groom that we entered into the ceremony.  Always a good thing.  When it came time for the vows, however, the groom made it through about two sentences when he paused, then stopped altogether.  He turned to one of the youngsters and asked if he could get him some water.  He also asked if everyone could please put their phones down for a few minutes.  About the closest I’ve ever come to losing a groom.  The water and brief interlude helped, though.  He made it the rest of the way through without incident.  The bride handled her vows with some heavy emotion, but she made it through as well.  They took lots of pictures after the ceremony, even though it was dark by that time.  But the moon was up in the sky, and my Sky View Lite app told me that the two suspiciously large stars were actually Jupiter and Saturn.  Pretty cool wedding guests.  Way better that Marco and Laura would have been …

 

Hebrews 5:11-14 says, “You are slow to learn … You need milk, not solid food … Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

 

Father, walk with Matt and Sheela now as they begin their journey together.  It was a great start.  Amen.