My Wedding Dinner Toast

While they didn't ask everyone to do this, I had two stories that I wanted to tell at Hope's wedding, so in addition to the blessing, I also wrote a toast to give at the wedding feast. I chose not to give it to the whole table (there were simply too many people to hear me), but I did read it to the bride and groom (and a few others who were close enough to hear). Here's the text:

In our family, Hope is the youngest. This means that for her whole childhood, she worked as hard as she could to keep up with me and Kima. If we got roller skates, she wanted roller skates too--and never mind that she'd hardly learned to walk yet!

When she was about five years old, one of the things she desperately wanted was to be able to ride her little red bicycle without training wheels. Long after Kima and I had gone inside, tired of our bikes and on to our Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Care Bears, she'd be outside practicing so that she'd be ready for the training wheels to come off.

At the house where we lived at the time, there was a path along one side that led nowhere but a rather steep and rocky drop to the river that flowed in front o four house. One day, little Hope was out practicing on her bicycle. Bicycles were meant to go fast, in her opinion. She roared down the path... And forgot to use the brakes.

Of course, she fell off the bike before it went into the river. My mom found her sitting on the bank, crying.

Was she hurt? No, not really.

Was she scared? Sort of.

Why was she crying?

She was ticked off that her bike was in the river and she had to stop practicing!

After dinner, Dad fished her bike out of the river, and she hopped right back on like nothing had happened.

A few weeks later, the training wheels came off the bicycle. Unlike Kima and I, who both rode straight across the road and crashed into the bushes, Hope hopped right on that two-wheeled bike and rode perfectly.

Hope and Peter, I think your relationship has been similar to this little analogy. You fell off the bike once or twice while you were learning to ride, but you knew you had something great, so you kept working on it. You have always approached your relationship with the same determination and dedication as little Hope showed when she learned to ride a bike.

Today, the training wheels came off of your relationship, and I'm confident that you're going to be able to ride smoothly. So, here's my toast: "To riding without training wheels!"


P.S. Michael is working on the wedding pictures. They'll be up on his site as soon as possible, for those of you who are curious about the wedding ceremony. I was too distracted by the beauty of the ceremony (and my gorgeous little sister) to take any pictures of my own.