Mr & Mrs Fish

You may have noticed that I have been a little scarce of late.  Well…

I had a good excuse, I promise.

On 5 November 2011, I married the fabulous Dori.  It was a beautiful service, and Dori and I were able to make it exactly what we wanted, and exactly what reflected who we both were, and who we were as a couple.

We had a reading from Psalm 139:1-18, which is not your usual wedding reading.  However it tied in beautifully with our chosen song, which was In Christ Alone. 

(Love that song.)

We both realise that this union would not have been possible without God’s provision, and so for us it was important to make sure we sought His blessing on the day, and committed to putting Him as the head of our lives for the rest of our lives together.

Plus we really had an AWESOME time!!!

Thank you to everyone who prayed for us:  Both before we found one another, and since.  Thank you to everyone for the congratulations messages, and all your thoughts and prayers.  As a thank-you gift I will be posting a series soon called “I have a wife and…” which examines the similarities between our relationship with our spouse and our relationship with God.

Stay tuned… the FISH is back in town.

(All pictures are from the actual wedding.)

How I hooked a fish-wife

True love finds you in the strangest places, and sometimes it even finds you where and when you were not looking.

In less than a month I am going to marry my true love, the fabulous  Dori.  The woman I was destined to spend the rest of my life with.  The person who is perfect for me in every way.  The person I never even knew existed 10 months ago.

How does that even happen????

In our case, I think GOD got tired of us both getting our acts together, so he had to try for a little bit of divine intervention.  On 7 January 2011, we met on a blind date.  Or, as I like to call it, a “double-blind date”.  Because not only was it a blind date for us, but the people who set us up… did not know me either.

Let me make this clear.  Dori and I are so compatible it is scary.  We complement each other in every important way, and already I can not imagine living my life without her in it.  We could not have been more perfectly suited for each other… but the people who set us up did not know this.  Only one of them had ever even seen me in real life. (I think.)

Dori has a friend called Yenta, who made it her mission in life to find Dori a boyfriend in 2011.  So she asked around to see if anyone knew any eligible bachelors. One of the people she spoke to had a friend who knew me,  and apparently I had come up in conversation at some point.  I think the person may have visited my church with our mutual friend, and may have heard me preach, or just seen me at church, but we had never met.  So said person said, “Sharkbait, he’s single I think.”

So my name just popped into a total stranger’s head one day when trying to think of people to fix Dori up with.  No idea why, or whether I was even the right sort of person.  Yenta had no clue who I was, and her friend only knew me by reputation.

And yet… when we both eventually succumbed to some intense pressure to meet for coffee… things went very well.

Date one.  Coffee.  Nearly three hours.
Date two.  Coffee again.  Four hours. 
And so on…

 

There is no way we could have found each other on our own.  It constantly amazes me that with our similar interests and values, we had no mutual friends and did not move in similar circles.  Yet once we found each other it was as if we had known each other our whole lives, as if our whole life had been waiting for that other person.

GOD might have infinite patience, but I think even he got tired of waiting for us to find each other, so he gave things a bit of a nudge.

And the rest is history. 

Remember, remember…

 

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

For those of you not born in a British colony, 5 November might mean nothing.  (Unless of course you watched V for Vendetta.)

But on that day this year, something quite memorable will happen.  At approximately 1PM (local time) I will be marrying the fabulous Dori. 

And no, we will not be serving fish at the wedding. 

It really is quite exciting, and will be the end of an interesting journey that has led us both to where we are today.
But also the start of an even more exciting and interesting one, methinks.

Tomorrow I will be telling you a little more about how we met, but in the meantime, just enjoy the picture above.  Yes, that really is both of us.  Don’t we just have the most talented Wedding Photographer in the world?

Must. Have. Zombie. Book.

I don’t watch a lot of zombie movies.  I don’t read a lot of zombie books.
I do have a Zombie Escape Plan, but doesn’t everyone?

Yet when I saw the latest book offering from Thomas Nelson Publishing, I had to request a review copy.

I strongly suspect that the book will turn out to be the sort of soppy, thinly-disguised allegory that will make C.S. Lewis turn over in his grave, and that I will be annoyed through most of the book at how they stretch to compare our sinful nature to the un-dead.

 

So why did I request it?

Because how can I not have a book in the Theology section of my book case called The Christian Zombie Killers Handbook?

Enough said.

What fish think about.

After the success of my previous post, What fish believe, I thought it would be appropriate to give a small insight into what goes on in my head.

They say that going to Church doesn't make you a christian, any more than sitting in a garage makes you a car.

Well, that might be true, but staying out of the garage makes a car rusty and slow. And first it stops working like a car, and eventually it doesn't even look like a car.

Sitting in a garage might not make you a car, but if you are a car... then it is where you belong.

Redeeming Love – Francine Rivers

I am not in the habit of crying over books.  I am a big boy.

But this one did inspire a bit of moisture when I read it.  Just a little bit.

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers is an awesome book.  It is a re-telling of the story of Hosea, which in turn is an allegory for the Redeeming Love shown by God in reaching out to his church.  Farmer Michael Hosea hears the voice of God telling him to take a wife.  (As did Hosea the prophet)  In both instances they are told to take an unfaithful prostitute as their wife.  Michael hears and obeys, however his chosen wife, the prostitute known only as Angel, is less convinced of his intentions.  So begins a long journey of discovery for both of them.

It is beautiful, and beautifully written.  I many have teared up a little on occasion.

I remember reading an interview with Francine Rivers about how her publishers tried to get her to publish this book under a pseudonym.  It was her first book published after becoming a Christian, and they were afraid of it being tainted by association with her secular romances.  (Which were a little more… explicit.)

She said however that the story was about redemption, and the power of a changed life, and so it was published as the first of many Christian novels under her name, a testimony to how her writing had been redeemed as she had been.