because motives matter
Katie and I attend several weddings a year and sometimes the wedding toasts are painful. It makes you wish there were auditions. Or an age limit—I’m thinking 35. I can’t imagine life as a wedding photographer, listening to shallow people talking about themselves every weekend.
I’m blessed to have a helpmate who helps. The Puritans referred to their wives as goodwives. Pretty wise, those Puritans, to see a wife as a blessing, a literal gift from the giver of every good and perfect thing.
Cherish this woman. She is for you, all fair, more lovely than you know, stronger than you expect, more forgiving than you deserve.
Your mom's love will steady you and her spirit will encourage you and her faith will sustain you. Some young men have mothers who drain them, even scare them. You are not one of those men.
We cherish and nurture our own body—yet in marriage we become one flesh. We take care of ourselves. We look out for ourselves. And in marriage men learn better than anywhere else to love someone else, to look after her interests, to be thoughtful and careful and kind.
the daysman 