When she misted up as I finished, I turned and said, “Did my poetry to you make you cry?”

To which she said, sniff, sniff, “I have allergies.”

In the immortal words of the 77′s, this is the way love is.

Jennifer –

Before God, our community, our family, I covenant with you — to be your husband. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, I vow to love you as my wife and give myself up for you.

I covenant to love you with the deep, wide, sustaining, mysterious, knowable love of Christ –

A love that is bold and broken A love that is graceful and firm A love that encourages and challenges A love that listens and speaks and listens and speaks and listens and speaks and listens…

I vow to trust in God for our provision while being diligent to provide for you and our family with the resources God has trusted me with. I welcome the responsibility of leading and pastoring our family in the truth of Christ — His Word, His Promises, His Practicalities.

I covenant –

To repent when I sin against you. To be slow to anger when you sin against me To teach the truth I have known To be teachable where I have a lot to learn

I covenant –

To ask your forgiveness when my pride wounds you And to be quick to forgive you when you need to be forgiven To be obedient to God — even when it is not convenient, even when it is not expedient

I vow to never leave you, nor forsake you. To care for, protect, honor, and love you for the rest of my life. I thank God, you, our community, our family, for the blessing you are to my life.

I have impatiently grumbled to God for many seasons as to what my provision would look like. On this, our wedding night, I thank God for you, my provision, and I must say before this gathering that, you look good.

I look forward, as husband and wife, to being nourished by God’s Joy through famine into laughter.

Was struck by how little I note the art that impacts me to me as I browsed our South Rainier in Renton Blockbuster yesterday and saw a copy of “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” on the shelf.

Saw this one last August at the Northwest Film Forum with my friends the Schlemlein’s — It’s a great film that I did not expect to see in my neighborhood video store (where 50¢ dominates more often than not).

My tendency is to not start things like this unless I can be exhaustive and capture everything in particular detail — which I never really get around to doing — ergo no journal along those lines so far.

So, I am hereby throwing the “exhaustive” aspect out the window — saw some films on DVD this weekend while Jen and the kids are out of town — 3 films that were particularly moving — will note them shortly.

Flickr’d up this photo of the ‘SFTWEJ’ DVD cover via shozu on the mobile phone while I was in the store — man that is a cool program.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Kennedy School, it’s a bed and breakfast that’s part of the McMenamin’s family of pub’s and lodgings.

They bought out a circa 1930’s elementary school and turned the whole thing into a bed and breakfast replete with restaurant, hot mineral pool, couch & end table furnished movie theater (with no commercials or trailers! — complimentary when you stay there), endless hallways of original art, and free wifi!

What more can a geek couple ask for!

(And yes, it is definitive now, Jen is a total geek – despite all protests to the contrary – see the post on her ‘You got WiFi?’ inquiry with the uber-tatt’d Kennedy School night desk clerks if you think I’m exaggerating).

I first visited the Kennedy school nearly five years ago to the day (late February 2001) while in Portland to hang out with my friend Don.

At the time, Don was a struggling writer who I’d struck up a friendship with online (how we met is a very funny story I will jot down sometime, hopefully soon – no promises – keepin’ it loose here – trying hard not to over promise and under deliver).

Anyway, Don was making like $2 a year as a writer and eating a lot of tuna. He’d had one book published that, though very good, was on the fast track to out of print.

I, in contrast, was still riding an absurd up tic on the pendulum-swing-O’life (funny how they come and go, eh?)

This swing had me commuting to Bermuda twice a quarter for three week stints doing web design on an insurance company web app (really, you can’t make shit like this up, it’d be rejected outright by the script screener as too ridiculous).

That phat assignment combined with the fact that I’d begun making my move on the very-hot-out-of-my-league-Mars-Hill-pastoral-admin-named-deacon-Jen had me in a mood to spread the love before it went ephemeral on me – if you know what I mean.

I had a another friend from Mars Hill at the time named Karl who was an aspiring writer. He was a very funny gent who wrote the announcements for the church and had a knack for side-splitting observationalist prose.

As a guy who decided a long time ago that encouraging folks to develop their creativity within the context of community was an important use of my time, I figured I would take Karl along with me on a trip to Portland to visit Don.

Turned out to be a great weekend — one of the highlights of which included Don introducing us to the Kennedy School over lunch.

That trip to Portland was also my first introduction to Powell’s bookstore – a place that, from the moment I walked through the door, was (and continues to be) – magical.

Romantic anecdote (about the girl, not Don or Karl) –

I still remember going outside Powell’s north west entrance while Don was paying for some books and making a phone call to a certain deacon-admin-hottie asking her for our first date (chronologically anyway) – funny how things come full circle, isn’t it?

And yeah, this photo is of me in front of that same entrance to Powell’s — 5 years, two kids, and many adventures later — snapped by the hottie herself.