Our Daughter

I attended my daughter’s wedding today. Her mother and I thought she would never get married. Our friends have made the comment before that she would have a hard time finding a boy-friend because she is intimidating. In high school one of her teachers made the comment that they had never known a young lady as self-assured as Lauren. Add to that her intelligence (she graduated #23 in her class) and keen wit and charm and you might could understand why a young man would be intimidated.

Lauren used to say she didn’t want to get married because she didn’t want anyone telling her what to do. She and her best girlfriend agreed that they didn’t want to change who they were just to catch a man.

Her mother and I are quite humorous in our own right but she has surpassed us both. Most people like to just sit around and listen to her.

She has been successful in her career. After graduation from Texas A&M University she came home and a temp agent placed her in an apartment leasing job for a major corporation. She was #2 in the nation in leasing that year. When she applied for a higher job within that same corporation and was turned down she asked me what to do. I told her to quit that job and find another one. She did but they wanted to keep her and gave her a job at the corporate head-quarters in which she excelled.

She is a young lady of the highest moral caliber. For her birthday one year she asked for all the Bible lesson books that Robert Harkrider had written and then jokingly wondered if they came with a Robert Harkrider action figure.

And then one day not quite a year ago she attended a Halloween party in the Austin area and a young man saw her and saw that wherever she went she was the center of attention and everyone was laughing and having fun around her. And that young man knowing only her name and where she worked tracked her down and sent her an email. The rest is history.

One of the preachers where they attend joked with Clark about the challenges of getting married to Lauren because of her strong mindedness. The young man told my daughter that was exactly why he loved her.

Today at the wedding I walked her down the aisle and gave her to that young man and I cried… unashamedly I cried.

Lauren wanted to make sure one thing was read at the wedding…

Ruth 1:15-17

Then she said, "Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law. But Ruth said, Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me"

She never planned to change anything about herself but her mother and I can see that this young man’s love is already changing her. We rejoice in who she is and who she will be. Thank you God.