"Your Prayers Have Been Heard"

I knew it was going to rain on our wedding day.

My mom always told me stories about how it was good luck to have rain on your wedding and she would use the examples of people she knew who lived happily ever after. 

But I so badly wanted a beautiful New Mexico day for my guests who came from all over the world. I asked my mom for that beautiful day, I watched the chance of rain in the forecast bounce around from 20% to 60% back to down to 20%, knowing that our unusually wet spring meant it could still rain even if there was no chance of rain in the forecast. I asked that it at least not rain when we did our photos but clouds were okay. I know enough that too much sunshine makes things look washed out.

It started out sunny and beautiful but I could see the clouds in the distance coming over the west mesa. During the ceremony, my sister and I watched her wife leave the church and when she returned my sister whispered, "It's raining."

And after the ceremony, the thunder started and it began to pour. 

I was disappointed as we sat the church waiting it out, knowing that it was starting to throw our schedule off. No matter how much I told myself that it would work out, I began to get a little nervous.

My friend Gary Keene came from Acoma Pueblo to attend the wedding and do a blessing before dinner. As I was standing in the library at Los Poblanos, some of the women from my group bustling my dress, they told me how Gary told them that the rain was a blessing. I found him at the cocktail reception, me still feeling upset about the rain (and mostly that things had not gone how I wanted them to).

He assured me it was a good thing and when he did his blessing he explained to all our guests that the rain meant that everyone's prayers for us had been heard.

The reality is that what I wanted more than the sunny day is my own happily ever after. And Gary reminded me that I got it.

"That's probably the first time someone at an event location like this has been told rain is a blessing," said my father-in-law David. 

Indeed it was. Thanks, Mom.