A couple of years ago, I read that fewer weddings were being performed in America. So, it is rather ironic that among our friends and relatives, there has been one wedding (or engagement) after another. It started about 3 years ago with the  wedding of my younger daughter’s best and longest friend. Since then my cousin’s son was married, my older daughter was married, the children of six of my friends were married, my younger daughter just got engaged and 7 more of her friends married in the past couple of years.  5 of my older daughter and her husband’s friends got married recently or will be married in the next several months, plus another cousin’s older son just announced his engagement. The marriages have been, for the most part, among people ranging in age from about 24 to 38.

I can’t speak for most of the marriages or engagements, but for my own children, the matches have had some cute, funny and interesting little quirks to them.

For example, our older daughter (Tam), who was married last year, bought a home in August in Denver, Colorado, where they live, and she and her hubby invited us (from NY), our younger daughter (from Palo Alto) and her fiancé (from Stanford), my aunt (also NY) and my cousin’s son (from Tokyo, via school in Washington D.C.) for Thanksgiving. One of the air mattresses was covered in a familiar blue sheep pattern.  Those were sheets I knew well. Both of my children had had a set and they had been Tam’s favorites. But hers had been flannel and these were regular polyester sheets. It turns out that these, not-flannel sheets, belonged to our new son-in-law Mike! They had been the sheets that he had grown up with. I’ve seen lots of kid’s sheets, having stayed at relatives and friends homes and no one that I knew had this pattern, so it was quite a funny coincidence.

Our Thanksgiving get-together had another little surprise to it. We were talking to our younger daughter’s fiancé and although he has visited us and was at Tam’s wedding last year I didn’t know what his parent’s names were, so I asked him and he answered that his father’s name was Lenart (he is Swedish). My husband was sitting nearby and was startled. “My name is Leonard”, he said (Leonard being his baptismal name). And to top it all off, our almost son-in-law’s middle name is also Lenart! So, without missing a beat, he announced that their first child would be named Lenart. (My question was, what if the baby is a girl?).

Years ago, I remember telling a then 25 year old young man, who was agonizing over breaking up with a woman to whom he had been engaged (he was wondering if he had made a mistake), that there is a “one” for everyone (who has a marriage vocation). And that when you find that “one”, you will know that it is the right one. I believe that. I believe that God has a plan and when you follow it, you will find the one that is the special one for you and there will be signs, some of them cute, some of them funny and some of them profound.

What happened with that young man? The ex-fiance was soon engaged and married to someone else and he is in his third year in the seminary happily and intently studying for the priesthood.