Recently I was asked to officiate a wedding for two people I know from the gym. One is the gym owner, and another is a lovely woman who started taking classes around the same time I did. I really like both of these people, but I don’t know them all that well. We’ve never had dinner together, or really done anything that is not sweat-and-suffering related.
When I was asked by the gym owner to step into his office for a moment, I honestly thought I had somehow breached workout etiquette. I instantly reviewed my greatest gym sins: the times I forgot to wipe my equipment down after sweating on it, the split-second failure to fully avert my eyes from someone doing that particular stretch in full spandex, and the infamous holiday party where I brought a $3 bag of chips and ate $75 worth of food. I was deeply relieved when the matter at hand only involved joining two people together for the rest of their natural lives.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been asked to officiate a wedding, but it feels like a big deal. I asked one of my veterinarian friends who was recently a bride if she had any wedding-related advice to share with me and she did. She said the most useful thing anyone said to her before her wedding was that if she started to cry, she should hold her bouquet as low as possible and clench her butt cheeks. She said that when she started getting emotional during the ceremony she did this and it absolutely worked. I filed the information away.
The bride and groom had planned a beautiful program, and I just wanted the ceremony to be what they had envisioned. When they invited me to officiate their wedding, they had specifically asked for me to add my own thoughts on love and marriage at the very beginning to set the tone.
I went home to craft a speech that would honor the vision of the ceremony and fit with how I know these two people but wouldn’t inject pets or veterinary medicine into the service. (It’s ridiculous, but every story I have about deep, meaningful love seems to inevitably involve euthanasia.) Days later, I was still wrestling with what to say as I packed my gym bag and hunted for my beloved water bottle.
That’s right. I have a water bottle I care deeply about.
It’s shiny, fits perfectly in my hand, and holds the exact right amount of water for a workout. I’m a creature of habit, you see, and once I have something that works I want to stick with it. I also hate the nagging feeling of losing things. So, it genuinely bothered me that my prized bottle had been missing and I couldn’t use it. The only replacement I could find was the beat-up old one my wife had retired years ago. I dug it out of the back of the cabinet, filled it up, and headed to the gym, still struggling to come up with anything meaningful to say to the happy couple.
As I stretched and got ready for the workout, I noticed my daughter, who has recently become a tiny workout enthusiast (mostly, I think, to spend more time with her dad) unzipping her gym bag. And there it was: my missing water bottle. She pulled it out and started to drink. I just stared until she looked up and asked, “What?” “I think you have my water bottle,” I said. She replied with a shrug, “Oh. It’s just, this is the only nice one. I saw it and thought it might be okay if I used it. Do you want it back?”
In that moment, looking at her, I didn’t want my beautiful water bottle back. “No,” I said, “I want you to have it.” I suddenly preferred the beat-up old water bottle my wife no longer uses. I wanted my daughter, this person I love and care about, to have the nicer one. I would rather have the beat up bottle for myself so that my kid might smile just a tiny bit more brightly, and feel a little bit more confident at the gym among all the grown-ups.
I didn’t feel like I was making a sacrifice. I truly preferred the old, beat-up bottle because I loved this person. That realization was the story I told at the wedding. I believe desiring to have a little less for yourself so another person can have a little more is what it means to really love someone.
It felt a little silly telling a water bottle story at the start of a wedding, and I hope the people assembled enjoyed it. I hope I made the point about how love gives us not just a tolerance for sacrifice, but a desire to sacrifice so that someone else can have a happier moment. I think that in life we often show our love not just by what we do, but also by what we give up.
After my profound water-bottle-related wisdom was delivered, it was finally time for the main event. When the couple read the vows they had written to each other, I felt my eyes turn misty. It was a deeply beautiful moment. I looked at the bride and thought “this will be my daughters one day,” and then my lip started to quiver. As my eyes started to redden, I thought I was in trouble. Then I remembered something. Letting my arms drift downward, I held my officiant book as low as I could and clenched my butt cheeks.
It totally works.
