June 16, 2007 -- Far from the trenches in San Diego

"There would be no demons of previous 'relationships' to haunt their married life -- no unwanted pregnancies, no abortions."

A
week ago, my husband Luis, a local sidewalk counselor, and I were
outside Our Lady of the Rosary in San Diego after the monthly Novus
Ordo Latin Mass when a young woman approached me and introduced
herself.





We apparently had met a year earlier at a gathering of the Goretti
Group, a local chastity organization. The young woman, Nicole, invited
me to her wedding the following Saturday. I was flattered, although
taken aback a bit, as it is unusual to be invited to the wedding of a
couple you don’t know well.





But, as Nicole and I visited over the next half hour or so, it
became clear to me – I needed to go to this wedding! To witness
this marriage was going to be a gift to anyone seriously working in the
Pro-Life/Chastity arena.





The following Saturday, I got ready to attend the wedding. I wanted
my husband Luis to accompany me, but he was nervous about leaving the
Family Planning Associates abortuary earlier than his customary 11:30
a.m. departure. However, when I arrived to pick him up, the sidewalks
were capably manned by David Lopez and a small group of prayer
warriors, so Luis decided to come along. In the rush to be on time,
neither of us realized that a short five-minute drive was going to
transport us to the polar opposite of the hopelessness of the abortion
industry and our hyper-sexualized culture.




We arrived at St. John the Evangelist Church in San Diego’s
North Park neighborhood as the bells were joyfully announcing the
imminent ceremony, and I became keenly aware that we might have just
walked into a time warp. We ducked into the church and encountered
Nicole waiting in the vestibule for the walk down the aisle.





As we hugged to say hello, she of course was radiant, and I of
course noted immediately that her dress wasn’t strapless,
backless, low-cut, or two sizes too small. She was just beautiful
– not “just” to imply minimally beautiful, but to
mean “only” beautiful because beautiful was all she needed.
She didn’t need a $2000 dress to make a statement. The joy and
confidence in her face said everything!





We settled in our seats and I admired the majestic gothic curves of
the church’s architecture. Then I noted the two simple rose
bouquets on the altar. Clearly, this couple didn’t feel the need
or the pressure to waste $2000 on flowers – the elegance of the
church was enough.





As I observed the numerous young families with three, four and even
five children (Nicole herself is the eldest of eleven children) and
nine young women and girls with their heads veiled, I reflected on my
conversation a week earlier with Nicole. She described her family and
how Alex courted her, all the time being protected by her family.
Several people had apparently cautioned her that she was too young for
marriage, and while I normally would have agreed with this, it was
clear Alex and Nicole had been raised for this. There would be no
demons of previous “relationships” to haunt their married
life -- no unwanted pregnancies, no abortions. No, this was an
opportunity to witness a young couple embracing the vocation of
marriage the way God always meant it to be.




If any of the young women who had found themselves at FPA that
morning had been in the church, their hearts would have been
irrevocably broken.

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