“This is my beloved, and this is my friend.” Song of Solomon 5:16
It’s funny, when I picked out this verse I had forgotten how familiar it was. It wasn’t until I wrote it down that I realized that it’s the verse that many Christian couples choose to put on the front of their wedding program. It’s funny, all those times I read those programs and I didn’t even realize that it was scripture I was reading, I just liked the idea of someone not just being your lover but your friend as well. Now I understand why. J
To think back on that day, the day when we joined as husband and wife, it seems like a distant dream. Like it happened, but yet, if we didn’t have the pictures and the video I would think that perhaps it had all been a dream. It’s only been fourteen years this June, but still, it’s been awhile! It was a really awesome day, it was the day I married my best friend.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was. He was just my friend at that point. Then he became my husband, my partner and my provider. I didn’t realize then what I know now. He would become my BEST friend. I’ve spent over half my life with this man by my side. He is the one person in the whole world who has been with me through more than anyone else, even my parents. He knows more about me than anyone.
Anyone.
Two weeks after our honeymoon when I slashed my thumb with a brand spankin’ new table knife while trying to pry open a frozen bagel, he was right there with a bandage and support… and advice about stitches. When I lay on a hospital bed, nine months pregnant having a seizure, he was there with the nurses. While I spent the rest of the day in a dark room with pitocin IVs hanging from my arms he sat in a chair by the window trying to read baby name books by the light through the crack in the curtain. I don’t remember him really moving from that post until he had to get ready for the surgery. When money got tight after the baby was born he went back to school to learn a new trade so that he could take better care of us. When I went on bed rest at 34 weeks with baby number two, he was there with McDonald’s M&M McFlurries, a spoon and a blood pressure cuff. When we moved two weeks before the baby was born he was the one who carried all the boxes and put things away. When that baby had to have surgery at age two because she was basically deaf, he was right there in the waiting room with me making me laugh the fear away. Even now as I’m watching her struggle in school, lagging behind her peers by almost exactly the same amount of time that she couldn’t hear, he’s right by my side coming up with just the right answers to each situation. He’s there in the morning when I need help deciding which shirt to wear to work and what groceries to pick up at the store. He’s there because on that day when we got married that’s what he promised to do. He promised to be there for me for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. And he has been every step of the way. That’s a friend. That’s a husband. That’s a partner. He’s so much more than a Beloved, he’s a friend.
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.” John 15:15
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20
Tamar Knochel 