Easter, Royal Weddings and Other Disturbing Things
Apr 28th, 2011 by Kimberly
Mark this week down in history: Easter is on Sunday, President Obama releases his birth certificate on Wednesday, and on Friday, Prince William and Kate Middleton get married. It makes for an odd group, but in a way, I find it reassuring. If the occurrence of those three events in the span of less than seven days doesn’t create a wrinkle in the space-time continuum, nothing will.
No question which of these events wins the popularity contest. This past week, my friend Diana and I stopped into CVS so that she could pick up some aspirin, and every available magazine cover had something to say about the royal nuptials. What would Ms. Middleton wear? Where would she and the Prince honeymoon? Why wasn’t President Obama invited? (Probably the Queen was waiting for a copy of his birth certificate.) When we walked out of the store, Diana sighed and said, “I’m sure they’re lovely people, but I can’t wait until those two get married so we can stop hearing about it.”
I sympathized with her, which is kind of funny, really. Thirty years ago when his parents got married, I was buying all those magazines and clipping out the articles to paste into albums. (I had too many to fit into just one.) Well, truthfully I was begging my mother to buy them, because I was eleven, but still. I would have read as many articles as the press could print about Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding, no matter how inane. If there was a chance they had a picture of one of his cute and substantially younger brothers, so much the better. Somewhere in there, I convinced myself that I was going to marry Prince Andrew. Not a shocker for a little girl to dream about becoming a princess, and definitely not when that little girl is Kimberly Emerson. I’ve always gone for big dreams. After Prince Andrew got married (cut to Kimberly in bed with her head under the covers all day, crying her eyes out) I got into acting, and decided I was going to be a star on Broadway. (Actually London’s West End, for a preference. With or without the prince, I still like the city.) Even now, when I’ve set the acting aside (at least temporarily) to get serious about my lifelong writing hobby, I dream about fans lining the streets to have me sign their copy of my latest book. What’s the point to dreaming unless you think about something different from your normal life? I could dream about having a soy vanilla chai and a scone, but there would be such a void after I went to Tanner’s coffee shop and did just that.
All the magazines speculated on what was passing through Kate Middleton’s mind this week. Me, I found myself thinking a lot less about the girl whose dreams would come true on Friday, and a lot more about all those girls whose dreams would die. Let’s face it, there just aren’t enough princes to go around. I’m guessing there were a lot of teenagers (and possibly used-to-be-teenagers) who spent Friday with their heads under the covers, crying their eyes out. What do you do when you wanted something so much, and now it’s gone?
I thought about lost dreams as I sat in church last Sunday, celebrating Easter with my family. (No, not because anyone was crying. Even the baby in the third row was in a good mood.) Easter makes a great story now that I know how it ends, but I imagine it was a very different experience if you were actually observing it at the time. To believe, truly and with all your heart, that this man is the Messiah, the one you’ve been waiting for, and then to hear that he died? He’s the Savior, the Redeemer, Emmanuel/God-with-us. God-with-us does not DIE, it’s just not done. But he did.
While I spend those days between Good Friday and Easter driving up to my parents’ house, preparing for a nice meal and a service full of beautifully inspiring words and music (choir, bells, flute, oh my)…the disciples and everyone else who believed in Jesus back then must have spent their time weeping. Maybe not even weeping, maybe still in shock. It takes a while to get over your dreams being buried like yesterday’s trash. I believe Mary Magdalene found out about Jesus’ resurrection on Sunday, but the average Mary (there were a lot of them, just read the New Testament) living in the suburbs of Jerusalem may not have found out for weeks. She had time enough to wrap at least part of her brain around the idea of dead. Gone forever.
Imagine a story where Cinderella can’t fit the slipper on her foot and the prince moves on to the neighbor’s house. Where the witch holding Rapunzel gets smart and shaves her head before the prince gets there. Where the prince you’ve been dreaming about falls in love with someone he’s actually met and marries her.
Even if you are completely not religious and find the whole Jesus story hard to swallow, you have to admire that kind of plot twist. No Hollywood daring just-in-the-nick-of-time rescue for this Almighty One. No, our hero is allowed to die, so that God can show us something beyond death.
The real moral to the story, in my opinion? God thinks outside the box.
It’s a lesson for all those girls who watched this wedding only through their tears, but it’s for the rest of us, too. All of us carry around brokenness. We get used to it, and tell ourselves it doesn’t matter. But the God that I worship doesn’t think emotional scar tissue is good enough for us. Even when we can’t see it, can’t imagine it in our wildest Kimberly-sized dreams, God has a plan for new life. Life beyond whatever grave it is that we currently see.
Some of us cry over royal weddings, some over reasons that won’t be televised. I can’t tell you whether your dreams will come true in a different way, or whether you will move on to new, even greater dreams, but I can tell you this: God is at work in the loss. So, go ahead and cry if you need to. Just remember, when you are lost in darkness – God is ahead of you, fixing the lights.
Kimberly has not cried over this wedding. She also hasn’t fretted about President Obama’s birth certificate. She’s become very self-centered over the past thirty years.
Okay, so YOU and only YOU are responsible for my crush on Prince Andrew. I mean REALLY, man loved a porn star, had bad teeth and STILL the 7th graders flocked to him… magic word… it’s in the name- PRINCE (and I don’t mean that wanna-be midget from Detroit, no offense to the midgets- I hear they don’t want him either). What’s a girl to do? Until someone can subdue Disney, (yes I’m looking at you Roy in Orlando!) it is what it is.
I still say I should have flown to LA so we could stay up to the wee hours of the morning watching it! Honestly, your worst wedding with me? Your best weekend ever cutie!!! Ok, ok, I go over the edge there. Euthusiasm, you know, it’s a thing.
I apologize for the Andrew thing. Much penance has been done for the misdeed, I promise.
You are absolutely right, the wedding would have been fabulous to watch with you there. When Harry gets married, it’s a date.
Just love the last paragraph, Kim. Have you ever read Anne Lamott? I think you would enjoy her if you haven’t already.
“God thinks outside the box.”
I think that may be the best sentence you’ve written yet Kim!