Lessons from a wedding in the woods

By John Krull TheStatehouseFile.com  BROWN COUNTY STATE PARK, Indiana – Brittany, the bride, moves down the rain-slicked steps of the amphitheater at the Abe Martin Lodge. Steve, the groom, stands just to my left, the members of the groom’s party standing almost at attention behind him. The bridesmaids are to my right. When Brittany’s father […]

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BROWN COUNTY STATE PARK

Brittany, the bride, moves down the rain-slicked steps of the amphitheater at the Abe Martin Lodge.

Steve, the groom, stands just to my left, the members of the groom’s party standing almost at attention behind him. The bridesmaids are to my right. When Brittany’s father brings her to the base of the amphitheater and shakes Steve’s hand, it’s my cue to begin the marriage ceremony. My throat, clogged with emotion, clutches. I make a joke about the slippery steps to buy a moment to gather myself.

This is the second wedding for which I’ve been the officiant. In both cases, former students who became close friends asked me to stand before them at perhaps the most important moments of their lives.

Both times I’ve been moved more than I can say.

I’ve known Steve for a dozen years. When I first met him, he was a college freshman, a quick-witted and open-faced young man. He lacked confidence, though, in his abilities. He was the only one around who didn’t understand how gifted he was.

Through the intervening years, I’ve watched with feelings too complicated to be called satisfaction or pride as he’s discovered the tremendous depth of his talents, the great strengths he possesses as a man. He is always brave enough to be kind.

When he introduced me to Brittany, it was obvious he could not have found a better life partner. Like Steve, she has the courage to be decent, the heart to be loving and the wit to find the humor in life. She was his match and he hers.

They belong together.

Now, as they exchange their vows, their voices quavering with emotion, their friends watch, smiles of deep joy pasted on our faces.

We adjourn to a shelter in the park for the reception.

There, old friends exchange hugs, swap stories, catch up and bask in the warmth of the newly married couple’s happiness. We congratulate Steve and Brittany again and again.

Night falls.

The party moves to a part of the shelter that has been converted to a dance floor. As the music plays, people begin to move and bob over the stone surface.

Isaac, one of Steve’s good friends and a member of the wedding party, has brought cigars.

We pull them out and stand just outside the shelter in the moist night, puffing away. The tips of the cigars glow red rings in the dark.

I look around at all my former students and their spouses and significant others, all now my close friends, and marvel at how they have made their way in the world. They have grown into substantial figures, people who make contributions, bear more than their weight in this life and bring credit to themselves and others. They make this world not just a better but also a kinder place.

This is the thing, I muse to myself, we miss in our endless debates about education. We focus on numbers and tests and scores and miss the things that can’t be measured, but that matter most.

The bonds that push and sustain us.

The things that change lives.

A little later, my cigar finished, I lean against one of the shelter’s low stone walls and sip a glass of ice water. Richard, another former student and good friend, comes over.

He says it must feel good to see my “kids” do well in the world.

I tell him that I’m just grateful that he and the other members of the crew still include me.

What I really think, though, is:

You all have no idea what you mean to me and how proud I am of all of you.

Richard heads back to the dance.

Soon, he and my other good friends, once my students, their faces suffused with joy at the marriage of Brittany and Steve, laugh and leap on the dance floor.

I sit on a low stone wall by the edge of a dark forest and watch as they illuminate the night with the light of their love for one another.

Perhaps somewhere on this planet there is a man who has a better job than I do.

If so, I haven’t met him.