This past weekend my youngest daughter was married.  It was a wonderful ceremony for a very special couple.

As with many marriage ceremonies there were the typical highlights.  I got to walk my little girl down the aisle.  I gave her to her new husband.  I watched them take their vows.  I saw them introduced as one.

But another highlight was watching my oldest daughter, Sarah, give what I thought was the most tender, loving and insightful toast to her little sister.  I was so moved, I asked her to write it down (being the actor that she is, she operated without a script).

Here’s what she said:

When I googled How to give a Wedding Speech I was told I was supposed to introduce myself.

So, I’m Sarah, sister to Michelle and Jesse, daughter of Jerry and Sanderijn, wife of Jeffrey and mother to three sons.  And now, I am Elan’s sister-in-law, too.
Actually, in the past 10 years I’ve been the one introducing people into our family either by marriage or birth so I would like to take a moment to thank Michelle for helping me out on that.  I can only have so many kids.

Michelle and Elan, as this is your wedding, you will hear a lot of advice about marriage.  Last night at the rehearsal dinner we talked a little bit about marriage advice, and I said I was saving mine for today:

I will start with a quote from Barry Schwartz: “The key to happiness is low expectations”

Well, I’m not going to go that far.  But I think the key to a happy marriage is actually no expectations.

You see, marriage isn’t what you expect it to be.

Marriage, is fluid, it changes.  Just like you are fluid, and you change. You may find yourself waking up one morning thinking that marriage isn’t what you thought it would be… but that is okay, that’s good.  Marriage has stages just like you do, and if you let it, it becomes what it needs to be at that time.

When you set your expectations on your marriage and each other, you limit each other, you don’t allow each other to grow, you don’t allow your marriage to grow,  and you don’t allow each other to change together.

So, love each other without expectation, be kind to each other without expectation and care for each other without expectation, and then you can see how wonderful marriage can be.

Because it is when you have no expectations, that your life together and marriage will exceed even your wildest expectations.

As I listened to my daughter’s sage advice, only one word came to mind.

Amen!

 

A story about my father on Father’s Day.

I was seventeen and wanted to buy a Fender Rhodes electric piano.  One problem.  I didn’t have the cash to buy it outright.  And since I wasn’t eighteen I’d need Dad to sign the papers so I could finance the purchase.

Know this.  I was a hard worker.  The day I turned 15 I started working as a stock boy in the linen department of the Maison Blanche just up the road from East Jefferson High School.  I took other jobs too.  Worked at a health club out at the lake front.  Worked as a greenskeeper at City Park Golf couse.  I was no slouch.  I was a hard worker.  At least I felt I was.

I remember making my case.  I forget whether it was at home or in the car.  That was where my Dad and I had a lot of our best conversations – either in the den of our house with Dad on the LazyBoy and me on the rattan couch or the two of us sitting (unbuckled) on the felt bench seat of a Ford Fairlane.

I laid it all out.  I had nearly one hundred dollars, good for well over twenty percent of the purchase price.  How I’d save money over the coming months and make the monthly payment.  How I’d finance the ongoing expenses.  How I’d save for this and spend for that.

I was thorough.  I was confident.  I had it all figured out.

I could tell Dad was genuinely interested in what I was saying.  He wasn’t much interested in the substance of it all but seemed fascinated in what I was trying to accomplish, and how I thought I could make it work.  But Dad, being Dad, couldn’t help but probe and test in a number of different areas.

Did I really think that spending all this for an electric piano was the best thing I could do with the money?  Were there any other alternatives?  Would I actually follow up and dedicate time to playing the piano and making it all pay off?  Did I really think there was any future or benefit in playing in a band?  Would I devote time and energy to make it successful?  And if I thought I could, how was I going to do that and still work, be a member of umpteen social organizations, stay on the high school golf team and meet the other obligations that I already was having a hard time meeting?

As usual, Dad was cutting to the heart of issues I was ill prepared for.

And the more Dad pushed, prodded and probed the more testy I became.  Finally, there seemed to be nothing left of the logic or practicality of my plan.  My beloved Fender Rhodes was quickly becoming an empty, silly, foolish exercise.  So I blurted out:

“Look, Dad, I’m paying for all this.  It is my money and it is what I want to do.  I’m paying for it.  I’m working for it.  I’m not asking you for a handout.  Besides, it is not going to cost you anything.”

Dad smiled.  Dad smiled a grin that at the same time expressed both admiration and pity.

I could tell that he was delighted by my drive and independence.  But I also knew from his face that he was disappointed that I was missing something very fundamental.  There was something I wasn’t getting.  Something very basic that Dad had hoped I would understand, but I didn’t.

Dad went quiet.

Then he smiled at me and said in a very deliberate but kind and loving tone.

“Son, let me explain something to you.  It is all my money. 

I’m not saying that to make you feel bad, or to make me feel good.  It is just the way it is.

You may think that you’d be paying for this.  That’s not quite right.  Whatever you spend, your Mom and I have to make up for somewhere else.  Whatever you spend on this is money that you don’t spend on something else … car insurance, school expenses, clothes … the list can get pretty long.

Now I want to help.   I admire that you want to work and earn and save money to make it happen.  But don’t ever think that when you spend money on something like this it isn’t costing other people money.  It is.  It always does.

One of the biggest mistakes is to think you are independent, that what you do doesn’t affect someone else.  It does.  Especially when it comes to family, time and money.  Because what you spend in one place, is something that you don’t spend in another place.  It’s all one. 

Of course Dad was right.  I wasn’t close to being self-sufficient.  And our family wasn’t wealthy.  I was a young, dependent child with the fantasy of making one transaction “independent” of everything else.  It doesn’t work that way.

My Dad’s line – it is ALL my money – taught me a lot about life.  It was a recognition that things are always more linked and related than people think.  People imagine being able to isolate or compartmentalize themselves and their actions.  Being “ownable” only to themselves.  It doesn’t work that way.  One action almost always impacts or influences something else.

Dad had the same view about family and faith.

Family is recognizing that everything you do affects the family members around you.  Everything.

And faith means that every day is a gift not a right; every action, a blessing not an achievement.

Thanks, Dad.