Anniversaries

Nineteen years ago today, I was a bridesmaid for the first time. I was 19 years old, and my cousin Lauren (pictured to my left in the photo) married her husband David on a hot Indiana Saturday in 1986. My dad, whose younger sister is Lauren's mother, was unable to attend the wedding because of a labor dispute at the steel mill where he worked at the time. We took extra photos so that he could feel a part of things.

Lauren is two years older than me, and we've known each other pretty much all our lives. But it was during the summer of 1978 that we really connected for the first time, at the family reunion that also signified my first-ever airplane trip. I was just shy of 12 years old, and Lauren was 14, and after we said our goodbyes that summer, we became pen pals. Somewhere, I'm sure I still have a shoebox full of letters with her distinctive handwriting.

Lauren went off to college a couple years before I did, and I remember looking through a scrapbook of photographs from her freshman year. Right then, I was inspired to buy a 35mm camera to take with me when I started college, which I made very good use of. (My college friends can attest—grudgingly, I'm sure—to how ever-present that camera was throughout those four years!)

I vividly remember reading the letter that Lauren sent to me at the end of my freshman year in college, telling me about her engagement and asking if I might be available on August 2, 1986, and how I felt about "dusty rose" tea-length gowns. I felt pretty great about them, actually! I was so excited that, at age 19, I was finally going to be a bridesmaid! (Who knew then that I would collect seven silk/satin/taffeta bridesmaid dresses over the next decade or so?)

Today, Lauren and David have three beautiful daughters, and in spite of the distance we live from one another, I've been privileged to get to know Lindsay, Katie and Michaela, to varying degrees. Lauren and I are still pen pals—just more high-tech these days as we resort to e-mail. Three summers ago, Lauren was the first member of our generation to volunteer to host a family reunion. How fitting that she should draft me to the committee of three (along with her younger sister Beth), since a family reunion is what drew us into friendship in the first place.

And how wonderful and amazing that, besides being related by blood, we have also been drawn together by our common faith; we are sisters in Christ.

I got to see Lauren and the rest of my extended family a couple of weeks ago at yet another family reunion. Lauren's daughter Lindsay is around the age we were when we first really got to know each other, and I'm older now (if barely) than my parents were back in 1978. Still, somehow these events make us all feel 12 again! We couldn't have known then what our lives would look like in 2005. And who knows what the future holds? I pray that, whatever transpires from this day forward, that God would see fit to continue to strengthen our friendship.

Happy anniversary, Lauren and David!