How love moves in

Jacqueline Bonifant and Matt Starkey
Married September 21, 2019

I have been asked in the past to write about love and marriage for weddings. It isn’t hard to do, I’m a fan of both. But last year, after my daughter Jacqueline asked me to write for her and her wonderful fiancé, Matt Starkey, I had no idea where to start.

Over the months, as I’ve observed these two people not plan, but design their wedding day, making every detail a reflection of their collaboration – their love – it became apparent that the deeper the love, the easier it is to observe but the harder it is to describe.  

One day I heard Jacqueline laugh over the phone in a conversation with Matt, and I had it.

I gave the following reading at their wedding on September 21, 2019. Several people asked for a copy, and I thought sending them here might be the easiest way to follow through. Herewith:

How love moves in

Hello friends and family, it’s wonderful to see you all here and wonderful to share a day that we once only hoped for. Very much.

It wasn’t long after they met that I suspected Jacqueline and Matt would decide to share a life together. It was just too hard to imagine them looking at anyone else the way they looked at each other. I’m sure it was for them too.

It’s a special look that I’m referring to, the one that people get when fascination and preoccupation have blossomed into love.

Love moved into the hearts of Jacqueline and Matt gently, but with deliberate speed, and intention because where love decides to drop its bags, is where love plans to stay forever.

Today, I want to share some thoughts about that, how love moves in.

I don’t believe love arrives early, or that it works alone. The way I see it, love has a whole staff that arrives ahead of time to check things out. They are what I call love lieutenants, and they have one job, which is to be sure that the best things two people are when they’re alone will be the things they bring to each other, as they grow together.

And, when each has shown the greater desire to grow toward each other than in an any other direction, and when each honors the strengths that have made their nearness to each other possible, it is then that love moves into those spacious hearts and makes them one.

And that’s when love begins to work from the inside out. And that’s when the outside begins to look like Jacqueline and Matt did that day at our breakfast table when I looked at him, and looked at her and knew an altar was in our future.

A word or two about love…

Love is the most desired thing in the world, and probably the most misunderstood because it is not a feeling or emotion. It is not happy or sad. Love is the immensity of all the feelings one has for another and the capacity to hold them all in the same place. And, so, love is 24/7, up or down, rain or shine, hangry or silly.

Love by some, is treated as a quest. But to search for love which grows wide and high with cultivation is like looking for the best friend you’ll ever have on the first day of first grade.

Love must be invited, but then allowed to reach us at its own pace. It can not be chased and tackled.

Love is not elusive, but will defy our wish to meet it if we are only willing to imitate the love we’ve seen between others.

Love is resilient but love knows its limits. From time to time it will allow itself to be exhausted. But you will not get away with forgetting to feed it.

And finally, love is the result of all that good lieutenant work.

I happen to know that Jacqueline and Matt were screened by Lieutenants Trust, Respect and Humor, and today, it is the marriage of those traits that have placed us here.

The result of trust:

…knowing that your happiness means as much to your love as their own.

…that when you set your fears or dreams or disappointments or shy joys free, they will be as honored by your love as they were by you when they lived in your heart.

… that when your faith in yourself falls short, your love will find you and hand you the part that fell out.  

It is the result of respect:

…the certainty that your love wants for you only to be exactly as you are, with all your corners and curves and potholes and lovely twists because that is the beautiful back road to joy that your love has memorized.

And it is the result of humor:

A quick story…

One time, Jacqueline was home in New England before Christmas. It was time for her to place her call to Matt and I was in the kitchen eavesdropping.

She told a story, and he told a story, and she laughed, and I think he laughed, and as I moved closer to hear better, I realized. This was certainly a funny story they were sharing, but more than that, this joyful sound came from the sense of life-inspired humor that they share. They will just never run out of reasons to laugh.

Today, as we celebrate this union of a funny engineer and an artistic consultant, may we cherish that they share a language that only they speak and understand

…and will build their lives around

…without even knowing they have been creating it from day one