Lists

I looked at the countdown today and realized, "Oh my...we only have about five weeks left!"  Then I started thinking about what there is left to do and though, "Oh my...we don't have much time at all!"

Leah warned me about this.  She said, "When you get to 40 days, all of a sudden everything goes really, really fast."

The good news is that there is a lot done.  The slightly more intense news is when I started writing down things that were floating around in my head, there is quite a bit we're going to have to steadily keep getting done.  We've been thinking lots of things out, but as with the church and the hall two weeks ago, we haven't gotten them firmly fastened in place yet.  And crunch time is coming.

I learned a long time ago that the most effective way to conquer the mountain is just to reach for the nearest thing and take care of it rather than studying how big the mountain actually is.  But every so often you have to make a reckoning on where you are and where you need to be, and that can be pretty surprising after not having looked at the whole thing in a while!

The part I'm not used to here is how distractable I am.  Normally, projects and I get along very well together (for the aforementioned reasons).  I see a thing that needs doing and do what I can to take care of it.  Right now, doing that feels like trying to paint a picture with leather gloves on: I can't quite feel what I'm doing and the results are a little messier than usual.  I think Ben sort of feels the same way, though it's kind of hard to quantify.  His comment is, "There's just so much to get done and it's hard to concentrate on it."

Here's a sample of what we need to finish getting done this week:
- Pick out wedding bands
- Make some decisions on what we're going to get done when over the next three weeks
- Decide on some food details for the reception (which involves taste testing...that should be fun!)
- Go over the outline of the ceremony with Dad Tuckfield (we have vows written, but we want to discuss Bible passages)
- Enjoy another wedding shower on Sunday
- Get those last three addresses and put our three lingering invitations in the mail

Dad asked me Tuesday evening - as he drove me out at nearly midnight to put the stack of invitations in the post office box - what it felt like to be a few weeks away from getting married.  "It's been too long now," he said.  "I don't remember anymore."

The truth is, I'm not sure I have a fully coherent answer for him, but if I were to sum up it, it reminds me of when I'm running and I really, really want to keep going that last little bit I set the goal to make.  I'm out of breath and my legs are tired and pretty much everything in my brain has shut down except the determination to keep going and get there...and I have that feeling that I really am going to make because I have just enough energy to get that far.  It's always exciting to me when I can push myself like that running; and it feels about the same right now.  Of course, I have a lot more oxygen going to my brain than that right now and I'm not quite so single minded.  But it's close.  As things come off that list, it's like one step at a time we're coming up on that goal.

There is one big difference between getting ready for a wedding and running a race, though: when you run a race, you concentrate on getting to the finish line.  When you get ready for a wedding, you're focused on getting to the starting line.  The wedding itself is only an official start to what is literally a new life for the people getting married.  You're becoming a whole new entity than you've ever been before, starting from that time.  I think that's really interesting and really neat and really something only God would've come up with in inventing this whole marriage idea.