There is a classic rock song, Hold the Line. The refrain is “Love isn’t always on time.”
I have to disagree with this thought.
I attended a wedding recently where the sense of love being perfectly on time beat in the hearts of the bride and groom and turned up the corners on every guest’s smile.
On the rooftop of the Halim Time & Glass Museum, on a perfect midwestern fall day, vows were exchanged, songs were sung and toasts were made. Everybody became a romantic, at least for a few hours.
The pairing may have been improbable, but somehow it was perfect. Ripe with lessons for the couple and hope for their circle of friends and family, we celebrated.
The museum was the perfect venue for the occasion. Just north of Chicago, the museum, nestled on a tree-lined residential street, is a private collection of hundreds of historic mechanical timepieces and clocks, and nearly one hundred stained glass windows.
In between ceremony, cocktails, dinner and the band’s second set, I toured the museum and marveled at the thought of history being held in a moment.
Love is always on time.
Second marriages for both, it felt like a first-time experience.
Meeting, as they did, later in life, getting married was not motivated by the desire to start a family or to fit in with the norms of a community.
The groom was from the east coast and bride from a small town in Minnesota.
The groom got degrees from MIT and Wharton and spent a large part of his career in pharma and healthcare solving business and organizational problems. The bride taught marketing overseas and developed analytical and intuitive skills to write and consult on the intersection of the material and spiritual; people’s relationship with money.
The groom had a grown children and a conception of life that involved partnership. The bride had been married but had limited experience operating from a relationship marked by shared values and support.
Each was raised with different traditions and developed different hobbies, different styles of communications, different habits of coping with stress.
But both recognized their desire to grow was fundamental. Their relationship already encompassed periods of sickness and health, challenging conversations and making adjustments. Total acceptance and support evolved.
In some ways, both have always been healers. Maybe twenty years ago, it would have been unimaginable to use the term, but in a world teaming with dysfunction, where individuals, families and workplaces can easily be overwhelmed by the weight of their own history, healing was precisely what was sought.
Now it was time for healing themselves through their love and acceptance of having an equal partner.
Everyone who witnessed the exchange of vows couldn’t help but be inspired. We all received a huge dose of hope.
Love is always on time.
I have thought about how this wedding felt different than other weddings I’ve attended. Bride and groom seemed to have a deeper understanding of what it meant to travel through life with a mate.
Instead of referring to the bible verse from First Corinthians about love being patient, kind and enduring, the groom’s sister read a verse from “On Marriage,” by Kahlil Gibran.
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
This was the essence of what I came to celebrate.
Love is about widening and deepening your capacity to experience life fully. Love is big enough to contain everything.
Floating on a “moving sea” is no small thing.
