🤵‍♂️👰‍♀️ Our Story

The mighty Ohio, whose swift passage
Herds West behemoths full of darkest coal
Away from comely seams soft buried there
Beneath the ancient Appalachian hill,
Formed unknowingly a veil between the
Girl cradled North in peaceful Chesapeake
And the boy who settled South of silt shore
In Huntington, where they would fateful meet
One Autumnal day. Here begins their tale,
Both students of Luke and Hippocrates
While studying the cell’s anatomies,
They once took respite from infinite leaves
In conversation, soon discovering
The melodies their hearts unknowingly
Had, apart, been stepping to, in studies,
Paths, and future plans, in faith, and by God’s
Sovereign hands, both loving life in like ways,
By grace longing to serve a hurting world.
One evening he, after frisbee, felt soft
Strung in his soul the mythic chord of love
With tamber kin to David’s soothing lyre
Which calms the restless spirits of a man
And asked her on a date, though when or where
He had not planned – he did not think he’d get
That far – and so, that week, their love began,
In walks, o’er coffee and Mongolian beef,
To find articulation sweet, and legs
On which to stand abreast the hull of hope
That cuts the stormy waves of earthly life
Which sometimes dupe seafaring men to toss
Their precious cargo overboard for hope
Of safer passage by their lonely strength,
Their love grew roots through motorcycle rides,
Long conversations leaning on the car
While dying rays of golden light caught fire
Her curly locks of hair and swept the dark
Shades of his heart under her gracious gaze
To be forgiven, loved, and healed by grace;
They found fast friends and with them then explored
Rocks of Seneca, Falling Waters Black,
Wild Dolly Sods under twin Ursas’ light,
Adventured far to Mayan lands, returned
In blizzard-shrouded trip, the more in love,
And held each other’s hurt when Grandmas died,
Both learning how to dry the other’s tears
And share the pain, the memories, the fears
Of human heart – companionship’s sweet balm,
Magnified joy in shared experience,
To understand and be deep understood,
For grace to always have the final word –
The elements of lifelong partnership
Distilling one by one into mortars
Of Hope, compounded with immortal Faith
And condensed into a greater Love by
Atomic rules of Heaven’s alchemy –
Great mystery! This girl from Chesapeake
And he, from across the strong Ohio,
Covenanting with one another on
Third of October – when the trees which dress
In mottled emerald, upon inclines
Of ancient clay, don clothes of festival
With yellow bangles, rouge, and cast their leaves
Into the tributaries and streams which
Run without end or fatigue into deep
Waters, trusting timeless streams carved slowly
Into the stubborn rocks and hills of ore,
Like love’s patient artistry on the steep
Geographies of the heart, supplied by
Sweet Living Water’s all-enduring spring –
Joshua and Anna’s matrimony.

For life’s unknowns which form the greater part,
They found the one with whom to trust their heart.