What God has joined together, let no one separate. (Matthew 19:6)

It was an odd feeling being back in a church after all this time. Granted I was in one not so long ago for Meg's wedding, but standing at the front of a church and sitting in a pew are two different perspectives. Usually, a very reverent feeling comes over me when I walk into a church. Maybe a mellowed out type of "Ahhhh" Choir of angels singing feeling we hear described so much. But the choir of angels must stay in the church, and thus I always walk out without them. No "new" or "reborn" feeling accompanies me as I finish my days. Melissa and Luke's wedding on Saturday was an odd exception.

I walked into the church and no choir of angels overwhelmed me with feeling. I sat in my pew, watching the violinist, thinking about all the things to be done immediately following the ceremony. Alter flowers to be transported, all the overnight luggage I had stored in my car and how I was going to find the owners of it AND get it into a room before the reception and the valets whisking my car away. I had spent the morning with the bride, bridesmaids and the bride's family, so there was no "gaspy" feeling as they appeared at the church door for the first time. To be honest, no overwhelmy feelings at all.

I knew the background of the church and how they were allowed to hold the wedding there only b/c Luke's pastor and someone named Steve Hayes (Amy, don't foget to be thankful to him! :) ) pulling strings. So, the two ministers at the front of the church didn't surprise me either. There was to be no group reciting of the Lord's Prayer or singing of Amazing Grace, which usually always swell the "churchy feeling" inside me. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. Maybe church was what I needed. Maybe the last year or so of pleading, crying, questioning, praying, unrest and unbalance with God could be soothed and eased...almost lightbulbed by a little visit to church. And while the idea of looking for that in a normal Sunday congregation doesn't appeal to me, and so far the one-on-one relationship wasn't working, maybe being in the church for other reasons would get me...us...back on track. But, no, just violin and organ and the low buzz of conversation as everyone waited for the service. I sat quietly, flashing back to Tapp's funeral. The drive from Greensboro to Chapel Hill with Neil - discussing why he "didn't want to date me". The knot in my stomach as I tried not to cry or yell. The service, where as I listened to them talk about our former donor and his demise to cancer so fast, where he reached over to hold my hand as I cried and to steady him as he tried not to. And how he didn't want to let go over my hand when we left and neither of us wanted the drive to end.

Luke's minister, Susan Andrews, performed most of the service and I was taken with her attitude. From my educated "intuition", I wasn't sure how "religious" Melissa was (in the church-going, Bible believing sense), but it seemed that Luke was. He'd been attending Church in Bethesda since he was ten (we would find out) and his family and Ms. Andrews were close. What I was most struck with was the way she addressed Luke, Melissa and the family and friends before her, as if she'd known us all her whole life. The service was nice. Luke picked a hymn that was his favorite and one I'd sang many times at youth group and on youth retreats. It was one of my friend Jill's favorites, Lord of the Dance. I remember the energy we used to put into the song. How we sounded almost like angels singing it, and how while one half of the congregation was (what seemed) very , very fast, the other half was very, very slow. Our minister used to always tell us all (somewhere around the third verse) to speed up. :) Or maybe they told us before we started, but it never seemed to matter, those that could breathe fast, sung fast and those that couldn't took their time and finished shortly behind the rest of us! :) (I always got sucked into whichever section I was in! :) )

She began the Pastor's Charge by telling us all what Luke and Melissa liked best about one another, and then describing the two things she charged them to have, to make a good, lasting relationship. The first was love. To always remember the things they had said they loved about one another, even when they didn't like one another. The second, she began was religion.

So, here it was. The sales pitch. There is one in every church. Because churches, although their nature is honorable, are, after all, businesses. "Blah, Blah, Blah percentages of all people who worship together remain married." And then, just as I was about to tune her out, things changed. She began talking about how religion, in the old sense of the word, meant believing in something. Melissa said later, the whole time she spoke she was looking at Melissa. "She's knows I'm not religious and wanted it to fit me, as well as Luke." And then she got to Matt 19:6. And although I'd heard it at almost every wedding I'd ever been to, it rang different in my ears this time. "Luke and Melissa were meant to be standing here today," she said. She had us think of all the ways their lives could have turned, but that God made them for each other.

"That which God places together, will never be separated."

And then it happened. No choir of angels, no Simpsons Opening Theme "Ahhh's", but the room got lighter. My heart got lighter. Just a shade. Could it be? That if in heaven, if in the books where it was written long beofre I was born on how my life would be, another was placed next to me that nothing - no other women, no long distances, no problems, no pain - NOTHING would keep us apart? That if God deems it so, it is? No matter what? And as Melissa said, when talking about the only time she cried during the wedding, "I was sitting next to Luke when he told Ms. Andrews all the things he loved about me, but no matter how many times I've heard him tell people those things, to hear it come from his minister, to hear it from someone else. I cried."