The wedding ceremony of our daughter Sara to Benjamin Gunter will take place this Saturday. Anticipated and planned for months, its occurrence will be an opportunity for great celebration—and not a little relief—for all involved, but especially for the bride and groom.
I confess that I want everything to be just like my little girl wants it be; she has a dream for her wedding ceremony and I very much want her dream to come true.
Things get in the way, though.
It’s an outdoor ceremony which makes weather a possible complicating factor. Ten days out, the forecast called for nine consecutive sunny days with an 80% chance of rain on the tenth day—on the wedding day. The next day the chance of rain was removed for the forecast. The day after that it was back, albeit at only 60%.
On the following day during my prayer time I asked the good Lord if it was wrong to pray for good weather on our daughter’s wedding day. I received no clear answer. The impression I got, though, was that while it was ok to hope that the weather would be good and that if I wanted to mention it to God while I was talking to God about other matters, that was fine, but that I should probably remember that pretty weather on a wedding day didn’t register very highly on the cosmic concerns meter.
“I understand,” I thought/prayed, “but it’s our baby we’re talking about here.”
Anyway, as of today, three days before the wedding, the forecast calls for a mostly sunny day with a high of 77°. Unless something really strange happens, when the wedding begins at 6:00 the weather should be just about perfect. I’m glad. And I doubt seriously that my prayers had anything to do with it.
If they did, then I should feel very guilty about not praying away a few tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.
The wedding venue offers a choice of two classy ways for the bride (and her father) to appear at the wedding ceremony: a Rolls Royce or a horse-drawn carriage. Our unpretentious Princess (that’s what her name means—look it up!) chose the carriage. Ever since making that decision, she has envisioned herself riding up to the ceremony on the carriage, surveying the entire scene and hearing the music that she so carefully chose for that moment.
So early this week we got word that the horse, whose name is Forde, has an abscessed hoof and might not be able to work this Saturday. This was very disappointing news. The Rolls, Sara said, would not offer her the panoramic view and the auditory access of which she had dreamed. Plus, she said, it would look snooty.
So the next morning during my prayer time I asked the good Lord if it was ok for me to pray for the health of Forde. The response pretty much paralleled the one I got when I asked about the weather.
As of this writing, we have no further word on Forde’s availability.
Yesterday (the Tuesday before the wedding), we had plans to run some wedding-related errands. When Sara got up, she had a severe pain in her right side and was nauseated. It was the sickest I had seen her in her twenty-seven years and so I set out to find a doctor that could see her right away. Thankfully, local family physician Dr. Mann said we could come immediately. When we got there, I made sure they knew Sara was getting married on Saturday. After examining her, Dr. Mann said that she needed to go to the Emergency Room to receive the medications and to have the tests that she needed.
I didn’t bother to ask the good Lord if it was ok to pray that nothing serious be wrong with our daughter. I just started praying. (I did throw in a brief mention of the upcoming wedding.)
So we went to the ER of our local hospital, the Dorminy Medical Center. As soon as we got there, I made sure they knew Sara was getting married on Saturday. She was given wonderful care under the direction of Dr. Brulte. Medicines eased her pain and nausea and a CT scan revealed that she had a kidney stone that had made its way to the place where the urethra connects to the bladder.
Dr. Brulte called the urology office of Drs. Anderson and Peters in Tifton to see if they could see her and they said to be there at 1:30. It was 12:30. I didn’t go back with Sara (Mama was with us now) so I couldn’t announce the impending nuptials but I’m sure someone did. Dr. Anderson said there was a 50/50 chance that Sara would pass the stone but that he would schedule an extraction procedure for the following day just in case. After going through pre-op, Sara went to the restroom in the Surgery Center and passed the kidney stone.
Today (Wednesday before the wedding) she feels fit as a fiddle.
We are so thankful that Sara is all right and we are so grateful for the wonderful job that the medical professionals did in helping her.
And while I am grateful for the good wedding weather it seems we are going to have and while I hope for good health for Forde the horse, I frankly don’t care anymore if the bottom falls out and if she has to ride up on a golf cart …
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