why I drove 7 hours to a wedding this weekend

Up until this weekend, I thought everyone hopped in the car to drive 7 hours to a wedding. Apparently (after a conversation with my husband’s sister), not everyone does this, so I started thinking about why I do. I mean, I’m in the car before you can say, “cake” if we are going to special moments in a friend’s life – baby showers, bridal showers, graduations, weddings, baptisms, or 30th birthday parties. Here’s why:

1. They invited you. Seems simple enough, right? Wrong. Wedding and party planning {can be} challenging. (*Please note my emphasis on “can be.” It does not “have to be.”) As you begin making your list of invitees, you often realize you have way more friends than resources. Thus, many people begin the process of narrowing down the invitee list. Put more bluntly, people are cut. People don’t make it. So, if I am one of those people that someone chose specifically to include in one of the biggest moments of their life, whatever it may be, I want to honor that.

2. Friendship is not about convenience. By making the effort to drive or fly to an event, you communicate, “I will be your friend even when it’s not easy or convenient.” Two years ago, I asked one of my best friends to be a bridesmaid in my Virginia wedding, fully aware that she was living in New Delhi, India. I would not have been upset if she was unable to make it, but the fact that she flew across the world on a Friday to be in the U.S. for approximately 48 hours to be by my side spoke to my heart more than any number of words she will speak for the remainder of our lives. It spoke not only about who I am in her life, but about who she is as a person and what our friendship means to her future. I want to support the words from my mouth and the feelings in my heart with action.

3. You miss out on all the pictures! Just kidding. Well, actually…maybe I’m not. I am SUCH a picture lover. I love capturing moments and looking back over time to relive those memories.

 

4. You have specific time to celebrate and honor a chapter of your life. How often do we really stop to examine our own lives and look back on a past season or chapter to say, “Wow, that really impacted me.” This past weekend, I celebrated with my friend Stephanie, one of the friends who studied abroad with me in Australia. We have memories together in Aussie nursing clinicals, jumping out of an airplane in New Zealand (That’s what the blog title picture is!), riding in tuk tuks in Thailand, scuba diving the Great Barrier Reef, and dancing the night away on my 21st birthday. What a gift and joy it is to be around those friends and allow happy memories to resurface! I often wonder how much I would actually reflect on the past if not for special moments like these.

5. “Greater love has no one than this…” John 15:13. Now before you decide I’m making too much of a stretch, follow me for a moment. You see, the complete verse says, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” The MSG version says, “I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature. This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends.” You see, I want His mature joy and I want to love like He did. And if He can give His entire life for his friends, then I can surely “disrupt” my life for a couple hours or days to celebrate a wedding of two people He has brought together or a little tiny baby that He has created or another year of life.

If not, then what is this life about? Is it about how much cleaner my house would have been if I were home? Or how much work I could have gotten done over the weekend? Or how many episodes I could have watched on Netflix? A good friend of mine always says that when she looks back on her life, she wants to know she lived for what matters. One day, when I reminisce about the last 50 years, I believe these will be the things that mattered. These investments and faithfulness in relationships will be fruitful in ways we cannot even imagine.

Let me end with this. Life is crazy. It gets busy. And then busier. My words are in no way an attempt to take you on some sort of guilt trip or peer pressure to add another “thing” to your plate. Believe me when I say I haven’t made it to every event I’ve wanted… My only hope is this – that the next time you get a Save The Date or Evite, that you give it a longer thought before you say “no.” There are so many blessings that come from what appears to be sacrifice and inconvenience in relationships. I promise.