Thursday, July 29, 2010

The not so fairytale wedding of Charles & Diana

charles-diana-2b It was a fairytale wedding come true for the older members of Generation X, like me. I got up very early on that morning of July 29, 1981, joining a worldwide TV audience of 750 million, to witness the very beautiful twenty-year-old Diana become The Princess of Wales when she married Prince Charles at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, England. The wedding ceremony with all of its pomp and circumstance was absolutely stunning.

As is well known now, there marriage proved to be anything but a fairytale. After the lack of intimacy, distrust and infidelity, they were separated and then divorced — exactly the ending to marriage that we Gen Xers expect to see. Today, exactly 29 years after their wedding (and 14 years after their divorce), while certainly disillusioned about marriage, I still find myself believing and wanting to believe in marriage, in a love and intimacy between two people that lasts a lifetime. There is no fairytale romance, wedding and marriage; it does not magically just happen in our real world. It takes love and patience and suffering and hard work to have a great marriage. But this ideal of a love and intimacy between two people that lasts a lifetime, I know it must exist. I know because this is what the Scriptures describe for us — Jesus himself saying, "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." (Matt 19:5-6)

Recently, I put together a list of the Top Ten Bible Readings for Weddings. This is a great top ten list which I've posted at Squidoo.com in hopes that couples looking to include a Scriptural reading in their wedding will find it. I hope you'll check it out too! Squidoo is a fun and fascinating site... and the more people who visit my "Squidoo lens," the higher my ranking, so help a friend out ;)  My lens has risen from #8335 all the way up to #285 in the "religion" category.

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