The Earring

Book 4 Part 5

Sitting at my typewriter, tears of self-pity began to run down my cheeks. My best friend had driven off into the sunset. My husband was immersed in a fresh challenge. My boys were busy making new friends. I was at home alone with a whole day stretching before me and nothing productive to do. I had just written an amusing column, but I had no publishing outlet.

I was depressed. I recognized the malady, even though I am normally a sanguine person. My first bout of despondency came in the form of the baby blues. When Josh was born, the blues blindsided me. I expected nothing but elation, even though I had read of postpartum depression. Surely someone with my upbeat personality would not suffer from such a condition. Luckily my mother came to stay with us for a few weeks after Josh's birth, and my attack of the baby blues was short lived. When the gloom returned after Zach was born, I recognized it and developed some coping mechanisms to combat it. Now, I revived my stockpile of depression-fighting weapons: laugh a little; live a little; look outside yourself and help a little.

I went into the living room and took out a book of humorous stories my parents gave me for Christmas, but I'd been too busy to read. The first few made me smile a little, but when I read about a disastrous wedding, I laughed so hard that tears ran down my face.

Every minister has wedding stories. No wedding is without its gaffe. While the event is happening most people refrain from laughter, but afterward, in the retelling, the humor in the incident becomes clear. While David had pastored for only five years, we already had our share of amusing stories. At his first wedding, the best man was secretly in love with the bride. In order to get through the pain of the event, he got soused before the ceremony. When the time came to exchange rings, the inebriated groomsman refused to give up the wedding band. David had to pry it from his reluctant hand. At another, the brother of the bride, a groomsman, fainted dead away just as the David began the vows. The ceremony halted while he was revived.

The most memorable, though, was one held in the borrowed sanctuary of another church. Both the bride and groom came from sizeable families. Our church was too small to hold the expected crowd and so they arranged to use a large facility in town. The sanctuary was beautifully decorated for the evening ceremony, with candelabras lining the aisle down which the bride would glide. As she and her father started down the candlelit aisle, her train caught on the first two candelabras. They tumbled forward, creating a domino affect. While the oblivious organist played on, the bride's train, some of the gauzy decorations, and the carpet caught fire. Pandemonium ensued. An usher rushed to do a tap dance on the bride's train. Groomsmen beat out flames with their tux jackets. Guests fled in every direction.

After multiple fires were extinguished, the groom rescued the evening by taking the bride's hands, looking into her tear-filled eyes, and singing, "We got married in a fever."

As relieving laughter flooded the auditorium, he told her, "I'm about to promise to love your for better or worse. We just got the worst out of the way."

The vows were eventually exchanged in the church garden with a borrowed spotlight focused on the bride in her singed finery beside a groom in rolled up shirt sleeves with no jacket.

The laughter over the story I read reminded me of our comical experiences. Having laughed a little, I felt better. My natural endorphins were flowing.

Since I didn't know anyone and had no a vehicle, I wasn't sure what I could do to live a little. Then I spied Josh's roller blades. Even though he was only in the second grade, his feet were already almost as big as mine. I wore a size two shoe. We'd bought the new in-line skates slightly large so that he wouldn't outgrow them immediately.