Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A month and two days later....

Alrighty, I've had a good solid month to try to adjust to the nearly indescribably (for me, anyway) profound life change that happened on May 23, and so now it's time to get back into blog world and start writing about it.

Before I dive into that, though, here are a couple of relevant links I'd like to plug for you:

-All of the wedding pictures are now up at our webpage, so feel free to head on over there, comment, add to them, or download them. The URL is www.tinocosanchez.com.

-While this isn't strictly wedding-related, Steph and I do work with Elevate, the college ministry at Flamingo Road Church, and they happen to have a blog. Check it out!

Alrighty. So the big question is, "how was it?," the definition of "it" varying depending on whether I was talking to guys or girls (it's kind of funny how that works like that, isn't it?). For now, I'm going to define "it" as the entire experience (and I'll probably have to dedicate an entire post to just stories from the trip, because there were a ton of stories).

There were two things that I was aware of right from the start. One: life can and does operate on two separate levels, and Two: We choose what level it operates on.
Our ceremony was amazing, it really was, but as I'm thinking back now, I realize that for some people, it was just a ceremony. A slightly more important day on the calendar, but still a day.

We didn't approach it that way, mainly because we understood on what level we wanted to experience this day. We firmly believe that God was there, and that on this side of the trip, we are one, and as such, now relate together to God in a way that we didn't before we were married and had the honeymoon. But the way some people ask about it (a small minority, btw), one would get the impression that it was all about the honeymoon.
You see? Two levels.

It's a little trickier to see on "normal" days (as it there were such a thing), but the dynamic is there nonetheless.
And so, Jacob wakes up one morning and calls the place Bethel, because God was there and he didn't see it until just now.
And so, Moses turns aside to a bush that he may have walked past a thousand times, because now he notices that there is something profound going on.

Is it just a day, or is it something deeper?
Or is everything an accident?

This is how I think the rot settles into a marriage; everything turns provincial, and it stops being profound. 

And so, I'm trying to train myself to see life the way God sees it, to understand that the moments I live in have a purpose attached, and that the notion that any aspect of my life is somehow disconnected from what God is doing in this world is a selfish myth.

What level do you operate on?