Yosemite Vow Renewal (pt. 2)

I have grown to love watching our story unfold. Building a legacy of trusting God even in the dark, building a faith even of the smallest size, and loving even in the hard and messy. I choose this life, all of these beautifully imperfect moments that make this life ours, and I thank God for giving me this man. 

A glimpse into our photo album after our sunrise ceremony.

This day embodied redemption and it all led back to Jesus. The way He came, completely aware of our failures, and yet He still loved us and chose us and gave His life to give us a second chance. God’s love was not told through mere words, but through His life, and this made the message of His love so much more powerful and so much more brave. The cross, love poured out, a constant reminder that love, true love, is hard and painful and beautiful and redemptive and holy. Love, the reason Jesus went to the cross. And now I believe that love is a brave word that can carry a touch of pain in all of its beauty. Because, while there was pain at the cross, there is also grace, and life, and peace, and purpose. Love, it has the power to transform and redeem.

We ended the day with a sunset toast at Taft Point.

This golden hour. The culmination of celebrating this unfolding love story and all the ways it has changed us, grown us, and pushed us into this more authentic kind of love. The remembrance that every day is a decision of surrender, a willingness, an affirmative action, and a deep dependance on a miraculous God. The actualization of hard fought battles down in the trenches on our knees begging God for miracles, and becoming acutely aware that this dependance on God has become our chief source of strength and success.

I see the threads of redemption all through our story and it’s not lost on me how different it all could have been.

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:37-39