My Superpower is Holy Matrimony...

I felt like a superhero last week -  (chaplain with cape...)

As a hospice chaplain for the last 6 years, I have never performed a wedding for a patient.  But last week the stars aligned and TWO sets of patients wanted a ceremony –both after forty years of being together.

As a clinical chaplain, I have strict guidelines.  I didn't want to do harm. It can be complicated at the end of life... Alot of things can be going on below the surface.

So I started researching logistics, the local law, and my company's policy and procedures.  I got the green light from my Administrator and Director of Nursing.  I found a way to support these patients as fit their situation and spiritual traditions: one couple was Baptist the story is below ( the other is Catholic and another future story TBD).

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The stuff of forty years of loving
Last Sunday, I performed a traditional Baptist Wedding ceremony in front of 15 people, in a living room already crammed full, with a hospital bed and the stuff of forty years of living and loving.

There was alot of love in that room; it was glorious.

It got me thinking about love.

The ceremony was the cherry on top of forty years of loving  (or maybe the whipped cream...)
I made a ceremony that acknowledged the way love happens...and the way life happens.

(Click the Read more below)...for a bit of the ceremony...

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This is not the beginning of ___ and ____'s love, nor is it the end of their love.
We are here to witness and celebrate their sacred union. 
As I think about a ceremony like this, after 40 years of loving,
it's like a cherry on top of those four decades of love - or maybe whipped cream.

Life happens that way. 
It happens the way it will…
No one can escape difficulties and challenges and unhappiness in this life.
We do the best we can with the Lord’s help…

We know that we are all just one phone call away from our knees.
But when we are on our knees, when we kneel in prayer,
we surrender to God’s guidance, and his protection.
He is supporting us when we seek to understand and do HIS will – not our will.

When we hold the LORD in our hearts,
HE looks out through our eyes…We see better with his sight.

• We see love instead of irritation
• We see forgiveness instead of grievance
• We see kindness instead of misunderstanding


• First Reading: (the classic on love) 1 Corinthians 13:4
  
  
• You may find the whole ceremony here.
  Feel free to use it...and make more celebrations of love. 
  It is never too late.