Our vows!
Originally posted there: http://mikaela-david.one. Thanks to Sarah Ferris for having transated our vows! She now decided to make her living out of it and is a wedding planner, feel free to contact her! >>> Darling Folk – Wedding planner <<<
Unfortunately most of my articles are not available in English… Google-translate being your friend, here is still a list of articles in Fench concerning Mikaela and me!
Our first encounter, and ISIS: http://david-pagnon.com/fr/lelue-de-mon-coeur-et-l-etat-islamique/
The engagement process: http://david-pagnon.com/fr/fiancailles-a-prolongations/
The bachelor party, parkour style: http://david-pagnon.com/fr/mon-enterrement-1/
“We don’t remember days, we remember moments.” Cesare Pavese (to his wife, after having forgotten their anniversary)
David’s vows
Mikaela,
We are now certainly living one of the most important moments of our lives.
I’m afraid I might not have the right words, I’m afraid of being clumsy.
But I’m not afraid, at least not anymore, to tell you
Before God, before my friends, and before the whole world,
That I love you and I that want to spend my life with you.
The author Alain, wrote
“Marriage is, from the moment it is pronounced, something to do and not something that is done.”
Some big changes are coming indeed, for both of us.
I’m French, you’re from the United Stated.
These two countries might be allies on paper, but disagree on everything else.
What else can I say ?
Despite all of that, you made the choice to join me,
To take the leap in the unknown,
More than 5 thousand miles away from your comfort zone.
I want to thank you for that.
Thank you, as well, for taking me with all my fIaws,
My passions, my “weird side”–apparently?
I want to do the same
I want to take you as you are,
With all your qualities as well as with our potential disagreements,
With everything that is hard for me to understand.
I want to make a commitment to you, and this not willing to fill a lack,
But to bring you something.
As the Bible says,
“There is more joy to give than to receive”.
Another author, Antoine de St Exupéry wrote
“To love is not to look at one another,
It is to look, together, in the same direction.”
Whether helping in the ruins of Alep,
Or raising our children if God gives us the chance to have some,
Or even deciding of the way we’re managing our incomes and outcomes,
I want to do eveything I can possibly do to work with you,
According to the direction God will glve us.
In that prospect, I don’t want to rely on my own strenght,
I don’t want to expect too much from you either,
But I want to rely on God to be the cement of our couple,
The third thread of the rope that unites us
“A rope made with three threads is hard to break”, it’s written on our invitations.
Mikaela,
I commit myself to love you, to respect you, to cherish you;
To trust you, to be faithful;
To forgive you, and to ask for forgiveness;
To laugh with you through the happy moments;
To share with you the hard ones;
For poorer, for richer;
Through all the exciting adventures, or the demanding ones.
Through passion or temptation;
With God’s help, until we are parted by death.
Mikaela’s vows
I Mikaela,
Take you, David, to be my wedded husband.
It is with greatest joy that I receive you as my partner, walking forward into a new life together.
I do not anticipate that each step ahead will be an easy one.
There will be easy days and hard,
Days of plenty and days of want,
Times of sickness and of health,
Years for putting down roots together and years for tearing them up again.
Yet we who have already crossed oceans to be together know that the God who began a good work in us will be faithful to see it through to completion.
And so, in every moment of homesickness and every moment of coming home,
Do I pledge my faithfulness to you, to love, honor, and cherish, encouraging you each day as my brother in Christ, my friend, and my fellow sojourner.
I will strive to raise our children together in the love of God, pointing them each day towards the source of our hope.
I will seek to be the one who understands you, even when you do not understand yourself to forgive, even as we have been forgiven;
And to be the mirror that each day reflects back to you your tenderness, compassion, optimism, and all the best of what you have ever been or will become.
This is my solemn vow, for as long as we both shall live.