One week away …

Earlier on this blog, I mentioned the amazing event that was the proposal by my fiancé, Tim. That was months ago, and the wedding is next Friday. Yep, it’s here.

And it’s interesting to be a bride at my age. The second time around. The LAST time around! People ask me, “are you excited?” “Are you going to have a big wedding?” And possibly the most interesting thing, “why are you going to have a shower?”

Actually, no one asked me that, but rather, commented that they think it’s cool that I’m going all out — that most second-time brides my age wouldn’t treat a wedding like a young bride would.

I tell you, if you find love once, celebrate it. If you find love twice, SCREAM IT FROM THE ROOF TOPS!

I’m so blessed to have the chance again. I’m as excited as a young bride. Wiser, maybe, but I feel the same passion for marriage, coupledom, whatever you want to call it. We don’t have a combined name like Benifer or Brangelina, but that’s OK. Timvette doesn’t have the same ring. But so what? I am just as much a bride as anyone 30 years younger than me.

And so, I have feted.

I had a bridal shower with old work friends. I had a bridal shower with new work friends. I had a bridal shower with church friends. And, I had a not-so-naughty “ladies night out” with family and friends who feel like family.

And they were all amazing. It wasn’t the gifts I received, (of course, many people gave gifts and I appreciate it so much!) But it was spending time with people I care about and seeing those people make such a big deal of me!

Little old me!

OK, at 55, I’m not so old. Older than Tim, by a couple of years, but not so old. But I wasn’t sure this was going to happen for me.

Twice.

I certainly wanted it to. To quote a movie, “I’m the marrying kind.” I’m extroverted and enjoy being in a relationship. The right relationship. And two years ago, on Good Friday 2015, I met Tim B. over coffee across the street from the newspaper where I worked in downtown Oklahoma City.

Across the street from that was Myriad Gardens, where we spent many a time walking the botanical gardens and the garden paths.

I thought I might want to get married in that park, and we discussed it, but we decided we wanted sand under our toes, so we opted for a beach wedding and will head south next week. We will marry on Good Friday, two years from the day we met.

How did I know it was real? If you ask him, he’ll tell you it was when I asked him to take down my Christmas Tree — at Easter! For me, however, it was when we had the de rigeur conversation about my weight. When he said “Yvette, your weight does not define you,” I knew he was the one.

Actually, there are many qualities about him that told me he was the one, but that was a pretty good one. And while I have lost some weight since he first met me, I told him I’ll never be skinny.

(But it’s fun for him to put his arms around me and say, I didn’t use to be able to get my arms this far!)

***

People ask how we met. I could say online, through a dating site, and that would be true. But the real matchmaker is God. Jesus was my shadchan! I’m not kidding and I feel this strongly to be true.

Tim and I both love Jesus, and can share our faith with each other in a way I have NEVER been able to do with other boyfriends — not even my first husband, who has since passed away.

Whether or not you believe this, that’s OK.

We both love Jesus and church is our second home. Our wedding will honor Him and celebrate the love He put into being.

Our reading is from 1 Corinthians 13:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

***

I’m 500 words into this story and I haven’t mentioned race once.

Is that good? Bad? Neutral?

I’m not colorblind. I see color and I celebrate it. White, black, brown, tan, auburn, all of it. Tim says he sees me as a woman first. I’m fine with that.

And when my naturally curly, knotty corkscrew hair flies free, he’s cool with that. When it’s blowdried straight and swishes back and forth, he’s fine with that. He laughs and says “at least you have hair!” It’s always a surprise, I guess.

We both love to laugh and he constantly makes me smile. We both have a dry sense of humor, whatever that is. Do we laugh about race? Of course. Sometimes, you have to laugh at the ridiculousness that’s out there. Does he sometimes enjoy being a spy in a sea of intolerant people who don’t know that he’s about to marry a black woman? Yes, I think so. It’s not that he feels superior to them, but maybe he pities their ignorance.

We don’t really talk politics. He hasn’t seen the movie “Get Out” yet (I have.) We laugh at old episodes of Key & Peele. He’s cool in a nerdy way, while I’m a straight up nerd.

And in seven days, we’ll walk down the boardwalk, onto the sand and say our I dos.

And this old lady will be proud to declare in front of of God, the ocean and a small(ish) entourage that I found love again.