As a child growing up in the days before VCRs, DVD players, and cable TV, I looked forward to the yearly opportunity to watch The Wizard of Oz when it was broadcast on network television. Besides the fact that the tornado footage frightened me even more than the witch and her flying monkeys, I always got completely caught up in Dorothy’s adventures as she and her friends followed that yellow brick road.
Near the end of the story, Dorothy is sent back from Oz to Kansas after she closes her eyes and repeats, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” When she awakens in her bedroom surrounded by her family, one of the lessons Dorothy says she has learned is that if she ever wants to go looking for her heart’s desire, she will look no further than her own backyard. As a child I never knew what she meant by that. Recently, though, I thought of Dorothy, her heart’s desire, and of what we can find in our own backyards. And then I thought of Katie and Jered’s wedding.
This past weekend, I officiated at a wedding ceremony for Katie and Jered. During the months in which we discussed their ceremony script, there were many things I learned to enjoy about them as a couple. But one of the loveliest things about the ceremony itself was the significance of the location.
Katie and Jered had decided early on in their planning that they wanted to have their wedding ceremony in the backyard of her parents’ home, which used to be her grandparents’ home. They decided to do this, at least in part because this is the same backyard where, thirty-three years ago this month, Katie’s parents Bob and Maggie were married.
At wedding ceremonies we celebrate, among other things, that two people have found someone with whom they can share their hearts and make a home. Of course, Katie and Jered and Bob and Maggie did not find their heart’s desire in that backyard, but it was there that they celebrated the treasure, the desire of their hearts, found in one another. What a fabulous reminder that our love for one another is truly sacred, right in the midst of our everyday lives, even in our own backyards.