15 Years

Happy Anniversary to my Craig! It was just 15 short years ago that we were sealed for time and all eternity in the Seattle temple!  I've been enjoying looking at my wedding pictures again-- they make me so happy. That day was probably the happiest day of my whole life and it was the perfect start to our wonderful life together.

 

That look on Craig's face cracks me up.  I was nothing but happy, but I think he was maybe 98% happy, 2% completely freaked out?  And in this picture, you can glimpse that!  (Edit: Craig claims he was just being funny on purpose.  You can decide who to believe there!)
 

 

And this is just hilarious.  We could NOT stop smiling and laughing.  My cheeks have never hurt so much from over-smiling!

I kind of love how cool Craig looks here

Not gonna try for humility, I think this is a great picture of me!

So here's a long, rambling story that will eventually meander to our wedding day.

When I lived in the Foreign Language Student Residence (FLSR), there was a girl who was fine and I mostly liked her, but sometimes she got on my nerves because she was always trying to be SO PERFECT that it could be a bit much.  She was the kind of girl who would raise her hand in Sunday School and quote looooooong scriptures.  Verbatim.  It just seemed like she was trying too hard, you know?  One day in Relief Society, she talked about how she used to dream of being sealed in the temple and gazing into her husband's eyes during the ceremony.  But NOW, she explained, she didn't want to do that.  Instead, she was going to focus solely on the temple sealer (almost always an old man) and listen to the words in the ceremony and the tremendous blessings he would be pronouncing on them.

I was so irritated at this.  She had just ruined my future (at this time totally unplanned) wedding because now I was going to feel like I wasn't as good as her if I just wanted to look at my husband on my wedding day!  How dare she one-up all of us like this!  I was so annoyed that it stuck with me and even two years later as I was about to (finally!) be married, I was conflicted over where my eyes should be during the ceremony.

A few days before our wedding, Craig and I went to the temple to do proxy sealings.  As the temple worker was getting our names, he assumed we were already married and started to write down my last name as Smith.  I corrected him, "Actually, it's Bentley."  

At this, he suddenly took a closer look at me and said, "Bentley?  Paul Bentley?"

I smiled back at him, "He was my grandpa!"  

My grandfather, I should explain, died when I was one.  In fact, he died very unexpectedly of a heart attack in the Seattle temple during its dedication.  And I've never met a stranger who knew him.  It turned out that this temple worker was President Nash, who was a stake president many years ago and my grandpa was his executive secretary!  He was very close with my grandparents and knew my grandpa really well, always giving him credit for keeping him organized as a stake president.  He's also the man who trained my grandma to be a dental hygienist, which turned out to be a long and successful career for her.  We asked if he could come back and be our sealer for the big day and he said he would be delighted.

So it already felt really special to have a sealer with such a personal connection to my family (often it's just a stranger who has been assigned at random).  And then, on the actual day, as he began speaking to us, the first thing he said (and I am absolutely convinced that he was inspired to say this) was, "Now don't worry about looking at me.  I know you want to look at each other!"

It's hard to describe how happy it made me to be given permission to gaze at my husband and to be released from any guilt I might need to feel about where I should be looking as we were sealed.

It was such a small thing, but it made a perfect, beautiful, happy day that much more perfect and happy.

Janine always reminded us that God is in the details of our lives.  This felt like just another instance of God being even in a very small detail of a huge and wonderful day.

Happy 15 years, Craig!  I look forward to so many more years, also filled with remarkably tiny happy details.