I have a wonderful friend, the kind everyone should have. She is kind, gentle, intelligent, encouraging, sweet, impassioned, and fun. She is from China, so I get the added benefit of learning about a culture that is very different from my own. What I have discovered is that while we come from very different worlds, our hearts beat to a very similar tune.
Linping sacrificed a great deal to come to this country, apart from her husband for months at a time, to let her brilliant son attend the best schools in the world here in America. She confided in me a while ago that she had a special dream for the time when she would be in China over the summer. She would be commemorating her 30th wedding anniversary. She wondered if I thought it was silly to wear a wedding dress for the celebration.
'No!" I said, "Lots of people reconfirm their wedding vows and wear their wedding dress."
"I never had a wedding dress," she told me.
Linping got married in a nice skirt, at a simple ceremony. She told me that she had seen wonderful wedding dresses and ceremonies as a child, but never dreamed of having one.
"It was so far from possible for me that I never had it as a goal," she said.
"Well then of course you should have a wedding dress now and a wonderful ceremony!" I said.
"But in China, it is not done," she said.
"Who cares?" I told her, "If you have always wanted this, you should do it!"
Yesterday, Linping and I went to the bridal shop for her to try on her newly altered gown. She is a beautiful and youthful woman, with a perfect figure. She put on the exquisite gown and looked like a princess. I came prepared with my good camera. We spent an hour in peals of laughter as Linping posed like a bridal magazine model. At first, neither of us could think of how to pose her in the beautiful dress, but soon, we were flowing with ideas and I had taken at least a hundred pictures. By then, I discovered my black and white setting on the camera, and we were busily posing in a thousand new ways.
"Excuse me," said the shop assistant, "Are you almost done in there? We need the alterations dressing room. If you aren't done, you can move to the rooms in the fitting area and take as long as you need."
So we moved and I took another hundred or so photos. We draped Linping on a couch, seated her demurely on zebra striped chairs, photographed the long train while the mirror reflected her face...
"Did you take classes in this?" Linping asked looking at my photos.
"No!" I laughed, but I surprised myself with how fun it was to be a fashion photographer.
Two hours later, exhausted and starving, we decided we had enough pictures. Since Linping hadn't expected to have a photographer at her vow renewal ceremony, she was thrilled with the photo shoot.
How like the kingdom of God this is! Before I knew God, I spent a lifetime with a distant hope of something that I believed was too impossible to ever realize. Could there really be life eternal? Could there really be victory over sin? Could there really be contentment and completion in the presence of a Being that loves me unabashedly despite who I really am? Will I ever be the Princess I dreamed of being in days of innocence and youthful idealism, gliding in the presence of a King worth loving with all my heart and mind and soul? Yes! I will stand in His presence in a crown of glory, resplendent in hope realized.
"Do you feel like a princess?" I asked Linping.
"Yes," she said, beaming.
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