Holy Matrimony!!

Doesn't that sound better than "holy cow"? I think I may start using it as an exclamation of shock and dismay, because frankly there aren't many things much scarier.

I'm driving to my cousin's wedding, near her family's home in Maryland, starting in two hours. It'll be a long drive, and my Dad will do the whole thing. I'll read and lobby for audio that doesn't bore me to tears. Maybe we'll have a fun game or two, since my sisters will be cooped up with us as well.

Nicole and I are the closest cousins each of us has. She's four months younger than me, and even though we've lived in our respective states all our lives, we're always close whenever we see each other, especially since the only other cousins our age live in Long Beach. I was really blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with Nicole when I lived in DC this past year - we saw each other five or six times, and had some good long conversations. I'm definitely going to be picking her brain about what it's like to be married!

Her fiancee is a fellow named Mike Hummel. I've only seen pictures, and he seems like a pretty normal guy (my cousin-in-laws-to-be won't be able to say the same for me). They both go to California University of Pennsylvania; he's just graduated, she's got another year. They met at a retreat with their campus ministry a year and a half ago in October (disturbingly, the same weekend and situation when I got to know Meredith. That really scared me). He totally picked her up, and they were going out within the week (she was very naive, and her friends told her she was going out before she realized it herself). They first talked about marriage that December, and he proposed to her (again, she had no clue it was coming) in June, on a moonlit night walking on the beach in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I have to say I respect Mike for asking my uncle for my cousin's hand, because my uncle is a scary guy with a whip-like wit. He played with poor Mike... finally saying, "Oh, is that all you want? Sure."

So they've been engaged for almost a year, and known each other for less than two. I have to say it's encouraging that it can happen fast - like taking off a bandaid, I think it'd hurt less that way. Seriously, though, I'm heartened by the thought that if I haven't met the One, it doesn't mean marriage is a minimum of five years away. My parents married even quicker than that. They were acquainted for a while beforehand (through my dad's sister, who was my mom's roomie; incidentally, my dad first introduced his sister to John Trammel, her husband of twenty-some years). But I think it took them a year from the inception of their real relationship to marriage; basically they knew they were going to marry from day one. That's scary too (and if that's the way I find my bride, it means I haven't met her yet).

OK, enough angst. The amazing thing about marriage is that even stupid people can do it. In fact, there's no obviously apparent link between skill and success. Some of the most clueless folks have the happiest marriages, while brilliant folks get divorced. God's pretty cool in the way He designed it; but like I said, holy matrimony is it ever scary!