The Joshua Tree

Yesterday, one of my good friends asked me to stand next to her on her wedding day.  I couldn't be more excited or honored.  I met Jenna in fourth grade in Texas, and somehow our lives continue to converge so that now I share a classroom with this girl (who was also my college roommate) at an elementary school in Norman, Oklahoma.

Best day ever.

We're crazy.

I quickly started considering ideas for bachelorette parties, showers, gifts, and the like.  And then, a whole day and a half later, it occurred to me that I am supposed to give a speech.  Thankfully, I have all kinds of time to plan this (and if you know how wonderful terrible I am at giving speeches, you'll know that I should start now).  I have a high standard to uphold: my Matron of Honor's speech at our wedding was a knee-slapper and a tear-jerker at the same time.

People had plenty to say to Andrew and me before we got married.  Some advice was practical ("Learn some patience because Andrew is ALWAYS late"), some was noteworthy ("Dating shouldn't end when you get married"), some was perhaps unwarranted ("Wait at least a year before you get a pet or have kids"), and some was hilarious ("Buy Febreze odor canceling spray for the bathroom and wait to poop until after he leaves for work").  Some of it just stuck, particularly this:

Marriage is a lot of hard work.  

I didn't believe this in our first year of wedded bliss.  In my opinion, couples didn't have good marriages if they had to work at them.  The first year was an easy, "sleep-in-and-make-pancakes-every-Saturday" type of year for us.  Then life happened.  Marriage is hard because life is hard.  That's it.

I love this quote from The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls:

“One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.”

I'm hoping and praying that our struggles, like those of the Joshua tree, make us more beautiful.  (They've certainly made us more humble.)  

Maybe the story of the Joshua tree isn't the kind of thing to put in a speech at a wedding, but it's oddly the kind of thing that I'll pray for my friends before they tie the knot, because everyone needs enough success to make them thankful but enough struggles to make them beautiful.