Dear Me: A Letter to Myself on my Wedding Day

Hello, friends! I’m Rachel…believer, wife, dog mom, adorer of strings of lights and hot cups of coffee, and shamelessly addicted to IKEA. I’m humbled and grateful that Hannah and I are writing on each other’s blogs today! What we’re writing about is near and dear to my heart, and I hope that if you’ve been married for 6 years or you’re getting married in 6 months, that our words will be a blessing to you.

To see Hannah’s wedding letter, stop by Rachel’s blog, Our Yellow Door!

Dear Rachel,

Let’s get one thing out of the way. It’s going to be HOT today. Like, 107-degrees-for-your-outdoor-wedding kind of hot. This will be rather inconvenient, considering you’re wearing a dress with the breathability of a plastic shower liner, but trust me…it’ll be okay. It’ll make a great story later.

Now that that’s taken care of, hello fancy lady! It’s your wedding day! You’re about to walk down that aisle and walk back up that aisle as Mrs. Hans Nordgren. Darling, I don’t think you really understand the magnitude of the change that’s about to happen in your life, but it’s going got be big. It’s going to be beautiful.

And it’s going to be hard.

Some of the sweetest days are ahead of you…days so full of love and contentment that you’ll feel your skin stretch just trying to contain it all. There will be slow evenings curled up on the couch together (you’re about to get Hans hooked on Downton Abbey…yes, it’s going to be epic) and soft morning snuggles in the thin place between awake and asleep. There will be road trips and belly laughs and Hans is going to introduce you to a magical land called IKEA. Oh Rachel, you don’t even know.

But it’s going to be hard.

I know you, girl, and I know that you glossed over that last sentence because you’re high as a kite on wedding-day-euphoria, so let me say it again.

It’s going to be hard.

If you knew today what I know now, you’d probably bolt out the back door. There are going to be days where you’ll fear you’ve made the biggest mistake of your life. Days where you feel like the physical blood-pumping muscle in your heart is going to rip apart with the pain. You’re going to cry, Rachel, and you’re going to cry a lot. You’re going to say some of the most hurtful things you’ve ever said and you’re going to do some of the most broken things you’re ever going to do.

It’s going to be hard.

It’s also going to be held.

You see, you don’t know just how much Jesus loves you right now. You’re going to need and feel His love in whole new ways. You’re going to learn the grit and grace of the Gospel in ways you’ve never known. The power of God will overcome your brokenness and your sin and the hands of Christ will hold your marriage together when it feels like it’s about to fall apart. He is so good, dear heart, so good and so faithful and you haven’t even begun to plumb the depths of His grace.

You will be sanctified, Rachel. Sanctified by love and by fire. God is going to use this marriage – this blessed beautiful broken marriage – to make you more holy, more like Him. The burning away of your old sin and your old pride? Yeah, it’s going to hurt. But it’s going to be so worth it. You will love Hans more now than you do today, and your relationship will be sweeter and stronger than you can even imagine today.

Trust me. It’s going to be good. Now go walk down that aisle and for heaven’s sake, make sure you eat some cake.

 

 

 

To see Hannah’s wedding letter, stop by Rachel’s blog, Our Yellow Door!