Blessings for a Marriage

My best friend got married yesterday. She was a beautiful bride and I was so proud watching her stand in front of everyone, but watching them stand there and promise to love one another was a little harder than I expected it to be.

She honored me by asking me to read aloud a blessing during the ceremony. I wasn't able to make it though the entire reading without crying. Like I said, harder than I expected. The reading was one of the most beautiful things I've read though.
 

May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness. A mountain needs a valley to be complete; the valley does not make the mountain less, but more; and the valley is more a valley because it has a mountain towering over it. So let it be with you and you.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice one another, but not compel one another.
May you embrace one another, but not out encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.
May you enter into the mystery which is the awareness of one another's presence - no more physical than spiritual, warm and near when you are side by side, and warm and near when you are in separate rooms or even distant cities.
May you have happiness, and may you find it making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it loving one another. 
-Blessings for a Marriage by James Dillet Freeman-



After the ceremony many people approached me, telling me how moved they were with the reading and touched by my tears. One lady asked me if I wrote the blessing. I simply shook my head no and said thank you. I didn't have the heart to remind them that to write something that beautiful you would have had to experience unconditional love, self-less love at least once in your life. I doubt it's something that would have ever come out of me.