“to have and to hold”
“from this day forward”

what was your wedding day like?
was it Pinterest perfect, with . . .
personalized touches
candles
framed quotes lettered perfectly
burlap
and every petal perfectly in place?

or, if you’re like me, it was over 21 years ago today (Sept 24) when the church was decorated with flowers and rented candles.

whatever the setting, whether elegant or basic, there was one thing that you may not have noticed that was part of the setting.
something you may not have seen in the wedding photos.

a starting line.

on the day you stood beside your husband or wife, and said “I do,” many of us promised to have and to hold from when? from this day forward.

there’s more depth to those words than simply noting a point in time when you were agreeing to have and to hold. you were saying something significant, whether you realized it or not.

you were saying, “this is the line in the sand. this is the starting point.”
sure looking back is helpful at times.
our past relationships provide clues to how we’re wired, or wounded.

but you can’t walk with your head looking backward, and your body moving forward. okay, you can physically do it. but you’ll probably run into a wall, or a tree, or a manhole.

when you promised “from this day forward,” you were saying, “we are going in the same direction. my life is aligned with yours. when you stop, i’ll stop and wait. when you run, i’ll run with you. but from this point forward, we’ve moving forward.”

no rewind.
from this point on, our life begins.

sure, i know you have a past. so do i.
but the past is, well the past.
we are who we are, and we are moving forward.

we have history, but we’re building a new story.
from this day forward.

this blog post originally appeared on the MarriedPeople blog.