Meghan Murrell got married Saturday night. Meghan is my almost goddaughter. She was the first of my babies outside the family. She's my darling, and I bawled my eyes out from the moment her mother started up the aisle until Don's car parked in our driveway after the reception.
Many years ago, during the summer between my freshman and sophmore years in college, I felt the call of the Lord to live a little differently. I moved out of my parents' home and moved in with a family with small children. I believed the Lord wanted me to learn a different way of doing things, learn to stretch, and experience children. Being the youngest of 5, I hadn't ever lived with children.
When I moved into the Murrell's home, they had three young children: Kajse was about 7 or 8, Mary Kate was only 4 and hadn't yet started school, and Luke John was a toddler, probably just a year old. Over the next couple of years, I worked very hard at becoming a member of the family, not just a "boarder". It was very hard for me, not that the Murrell's weren't wonderful, but it was so very different from my home, which was all I had known in the past. And I had almost no contact with friends and family.
About a year and a half into living with them, I began to pray for them to have a new baby. I really wanted a baby in the house. Suffice it to say, I mentioned it by accident one day, and World War III erupted. It seems Karen wasn't ready for another baby and was upset I was praying for her to have one. I continued to pray and the Lord moved on her heart; Meg was conceived.
It was obvious to everyone when she was born that she was MY baby. A classmate of mine in French IV at my college wrote a poem about "La Petite Meghan" because we had talked so much about the baby in class. I even suggested to Karen that she let me take Meg to school with me every morning in her basket.
"She'll just sleep," I pointed out. "You'll be able to have some freedom and do your errands. If she gets fussy, I can always hold her in the back of the classroom and bounce her. She'll go right back to sleep!" Karen vehemently resisted.
It wasn't long before I put Meg to bed EVERY night. She was one of those babies who would force herself to stay awake. Karen would nurse her, but she never fell asleep while nursing. Once she had finished her final nursing of the evening, I would take her, put her in my lap facing me, hold her head tight against my chest, sing to her and bounce her on her parents' bed for 20 minutes or so. It never failed to work. One night, Karen decided she needed to be able to get her own child to bed. She told me I could have the night off (not that I WANTED the night off) and took the baby upstairs. Forty-five minutes later, in frustration, Karen returned downstairs.
"Patti," she asked, exasperated, "would YOU please put Meghan to bed?"
Delighted, I'm sure! I even had the dubious pleasure of weening Meg when her parents had to take a trip to Arizona and discovered at the last minute that they couldn't take the still-nursing baby.
For years I fussed at Karen for not naming me the godmother.
"Patti!" she would fuss right back, "You're not Catholic. She had to have a Catholic godmother."
"You know I would've raised her in the Catholic church, Karen. She's MY baby. I should've been her godmother!"
Lest you think I talk this way to most people, after 4 years of living in Karen's home, we became VERY close, like sisters, really. There are things I would say to her (and she would say to me, as well) that we probably would never share with another person. Anyway, when Meghan started college, she and I discussed this issue, also.
Meghan: "I never understood WHY you weren't my godmother. It always FELT like you were."
Me: "I know. And I was very frustrated with your mother about that, but you needed a Catholic godmother, and I'm Protestant."
Meghan: "Well, I consider you my honorary godmother. Can't you be my godmother, too?"
Not to slight her real godmother, whom she dearly loves, but Meghan and I had a bond at a very different different level. She was my FIRST baby.
And now she's married, ready to begin a new life and have her own children. The event was wonderfully exciting, but, also, bittersweet. I watched her walk up the aisle, so poised and lovely, yet in my mind's eye, I saw the little red-headed, freckled wild child with the hair poking in all directions and the mischievous look in her eye sitting in my lap, poking me in the eye and giggling. I sat next to the center aisle in the back of the church with tears streaming down my face. Meghan glanced just past me and never made eye contact. After the wedding, during the picture-taking, Don and I hung around with the family. Meghan ran to me, hugged and kissed me and said,
"Aunt Patti, the first person I saw when I started down the aisle was YOU! And you were crying! I knew that if I looked at you, I'd lose it and would cry through my whole wedding, so I quickly looked away. I'm sorry if you didn't think I saw you."
What a darling girl. How could I HELP but love her?
Lots of tears were shed but my darling Meg made a good choice. Her husband is a godly man who grew up with her and was raised in a fine, Christian home. He dearly loves her, as she does him. They're a good match and will have a good, fruitful life together. Someone once told me that the test of whether or not to marry is this: will your marriage enable you to do things for the Lord that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do? If so, marry. If not, remain single and serve the Lord that way.
Meghan is just beginning a new chapter of serving the Lord; through serving a husband, his family and, one day, her children. She will need to seek his wisdom daily to be the best wife and mother she can be. And as her heart is knitted to her husbands and his to hers, she will continue to grow in God's grace, beauty and strength, as every Christian woman should.
Congratulations, la petite Meghan. Je t'aime, ma cherie.
No comments:
Post a Comment