BJUnity

how I found and wed the love of my life
by Jaclyn Walker

Jaclyn Walker

Our wedding was the simplest ceremony I can imagine, but it was the most intimate experience of my life.

Anna and I first met via an online singles site. We hung out a few times, talked on the phone, then drifted apart. I thought of her often. I was, in truth, smitten with her from the first time I spoke with her, and I knew that our relationship could not be casual. I didn’t know if that meant we would be inseparable friends or something more, but I knew it had to be one of the most real relationships that I would ever have.

Last October, Anna found me on FaceBook and invited me to lunch. I agreed, ecstatic but nervous. The day of our lunch, we ate nervously, avoiding too much direct eye contact then took a walk in the neighborhood around my workplace. It was cold. We both stuffed our hands in our pockets and walked quickly, spoke quickly. At the end of it, we hugged and went our separate ways.

Anna & Jaclyn

A few weeks later, just before Thanksgiving and after several exchanges on FaceBook, Anna wrote me a message telling me, essentially, that she “liked” me. I couldn’t stop grinning. On Thanksgiving, she came over to watch The Sound of Music, and from that time onward, it was never a doubt in my mind that my initial impression was correct—we were meant to be together in the most intimate capacity.

Fast forward several months to July. We’d begun discussing the possibility of marriage and a full life together. I had often marveled during our relationship that Anna was just as big a romantic as I, something I thought impossible to find. Marriage was no different—once again, her passion and love astounded me.

We knew that we wanted to marry. We knew that we wanted it to be small. We began planning a small get-together and quickly discovered that even small-scale, wedding planning is hard work! Working out how to get everyone together on an afternoon, even two months in advance, plus food arrangements, registries, etc was hard to think about, and we changed our plans about seven times.

One day, Anna called me on my lunch break and said, “Baby, do you just want to go down to Dad’s and marry ourselves this weekend?” It was Thursday already, but I didn’t have to think. “Yes,” I said.

When I got home that evening, we talked about it. She wanted to know if it was really ok with me. And of course it was.

the garden where we exchanged our vows

The next evening, we drove the two hours down to her father’s land in the Missouri countryside. The day after, August 18, 2012, sometime in the afternoon when the gardening was done, we held hands and walked over to a vine-laced archway between the garden and the old barn. There, face-to-face and crying, we told each other why we want to be together forever. George, the resident black Labrador, witnessed it quite politely, sitting next to us and beaming his doggy smiles. All of this took about fifteen minutes before we kissed and walked back into the house.

George, the resident black Labrador, witnessed it quite politely

What made this one of the most spiritual and meaningful happenings in my life is simple. The love we have for each other is our own love that Anna and I cultivated from the beginning of “us.” This love is ours. It is not the world’s; it is not the church’s; it is not our parents’ or our friends’ or our coworkers’ or our neighbors’ love. As we declared our love and made our vows, we did it for ourselves and for forever. This is the sweetest blessing.

I recall one day while on a long walk we stopped at Subway to get lunch. At one point during our conversation, Anna looked at me and said, “How many people actually find someone to love them like this? People go lifetimes without this! And we’ve got it.”

So we do.

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