It's Really Happening

Things have gradually fallen into place for our wedding. After negotiating with the minister and the church and our family, we've settled on a date and time and place. We've contacted the local county clerk's office and verified that there's no "waiting period" in California. We have all the documents we need. We have plane tickets, and my family has rearranged their schedules and made travel plans. It will be the first time we've all been together in one place since my grandmother's funeral.

There's a strange sort of synchronicity at work here. If California had legalized marriage one year ago, we couldn't have gone then, because Göran has only been able to obtain his birth certificate within the past year. If Göran had had his birth certificate and had obtained his passport earlier, we probably would have gone to Canada to get married. But now, marriage within our own country has become an option at the same time that travel abroad has also become available to us. It is almost as if we were were destined to get married now and only now. For nine years, we faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Now all the doors have decided to open at the same time.

I've been mentally trying to process the contradiction in my own heart and head between my testimony of the LDS Church, which I love with my whole heart despite the strong anti-gay marriage stance taken by the Church leadership, and my absolutely unshakeable, unquestioning, rock-bottom sense that getting married is the right thing to do. Nothing can convince me otherwise. I know what the Church says, I know what some people think, I know what some of the political pundits are blabbing about.

A scriptural text has been running through my head the last couple of weeks. I've been thinking of all the instances in the New Testament in which someone with an ailment came to Christ and received a healing, and Christ's response to them was, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." They came to him for healing, and he said to them, essentially, Your faith is the source of this gift.

And I've thought, it would be nice if gay marriage were not so controversial. It would be nice if making a pilgrimage to California to get married were not viewed by so many as an abomination and a mockery. It would be nice if everyone could celebrate our love with the same joy that we feel. It would be nice if our union could be blessed by the priesthood of the Church I have a testimony of. Instead, we're caught in this maelstrom of controversy about something that should be so simple, so basic. Commitment. Love. Family. Community.

I get on my knees and I pray, and the Spirit envelops me and says: It is your faith that gives this act meaning, that gives it the power to bind your family together. Everything will eventually be sorted out. All the confusion and darkness and false controversy will someday subside (maybe not in this life, not in this world ruled by darkness and hatred). When truth and love finally reign, you will look back on this moment and see that it was your faith in this moment of darkness that brought healing to you, to your loved ones, to your community and to the whole human family and all creation.