Abby, after all the years of dreaming, the months of planning, and the anticipating before your wedding, it is easy for this sweet season to become all about the day itself — the dress, the flowers, the music, the celebration. But as beautiful as I know your wedding will be, what we are really here to celebrate today is your marriage.

And that feels especially exciting and meaningful to me because I’ve known you since you were born. I have always been mesmerized by those beautiful blue eyes, dazzled by your radiant smile, and touched by your kindness and compassion. I was even one of the original Herrold Sisters groupies who followed you on tour all around the city. And, of course, your mom is one of my dearest friends.

I’ve also known Jake since he was in the 1st grade, when he and Josh became very close friends at Eliot. Even as a little first grader, Jake already had the makings of a true gentleman — always smiling, full of energy, and unfailingly polite. Pam and I became good friends during those years as well, and because Jake was her youngest while Josh was my oldest, I especially treasured sitting next to her at the Spiderboys soccer games and soaking up all her parenting wisdom.

There is something really special about looking back now and realizing that all those years I knew Abby, and all those years I knew Jake, I had no idea I was watching the beginning of a story that would someday become “Abby and Jake”.

As a writer, there are two things I always try to avoid when I write — cliches and platitudes. And as a woman who has been married for 33 years, my view of marriage has evolved from naïve idealism to earned realism. In light of these two things, this might be a slightly unusual approach for a bridal luncheon, but I want to share something that I believe very deeply about marriage.

We often think of marriage primarily in terms of happiness, and I hope yours is filled to the brim with it. I hope you laugh constantly, have wonderful adventures, build traditions that are uniquely yours, enjoy ordinary days together, and fifty years from now still genuinely delight in one another.
But I don’t believe God created marriage simply to make us happy. I think he also created it to make us holy.
Timothy Keller writes beautifully about this in his book The Meaning of Marriage. He says that one of the great purposes of marriage is sanctification — that God uses this relationship more than any other to shape us into the people He created us to become.
And the longer I have been married, the more I believe that is true.
Marriage gives another person extraordinary access to us. Your spouse knows the best parts of you, but also the selfish parts, the impatient parts, the stubborn parts and the parts you may be very good at hiding from everyone else.
And somehow, that is both terrifying and wonderful.
Because to be radically known and still deeply loved is one of the great gifts of marriage.

And in that kind of love, God does some of His best work. When we feel safe enough to be truly seen—fully known, without fear or pretense—we create room for the kind of honesty, grace, and surrender through which He sanctifies us.
Marriage teaches us how to put someone else before ourselves, how to listen when we would rather defend, how to apologize when we would very much prefer to explain why we were right, how to forgive, how to extend grace, and how to love in ways that are deeper than emotion alone.
But that refining is not the whole story.

There is extraordinary joy in building a life together — in the trips and celebrations, yes, but also in the small things that eventually become the texture of a life: favorite restaurants, private jokes, Sunday mornings, family traditions, the stories you tell over and over because they still make you laugh.
So marriage is not only a tool God uses to sand off our rough edges. It is also one of His great gifts of companionship.

And I think a marriage is the most beautiful and fulfilling when those two things are intertwined. The very person who brings you so much joy is also the person God uses most powerfully to shape you. You each get the extraordinary privilege of contributing to one another’s joy and participating in one another’s growth.

My hope is that decades from now, you will look at each other and think, “I knew who you were when I married you, but what a privilege it has been to watch who God made you become.”

So Abby, knowing you and Jake, I truly believe you will have a deeply happy marriage. But my greatest wish and prayer for you is that it is a holy one.
I hope the joy draws you toward gratitude, the difficulties draw you toward grace, and the years draw you closer to one another and closer to Jesus.