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Last weekend I officiated a beach wedding in Santa Barbara for a wonderful couple. As part of the ceremony, the couple selected the “Blending of the Sands” ceremony which, for some weddings, replaces the more traditional lighting of the unity candle. Blending of sands is such a cool symbolism of two lives becoming one. Both the bride and groom poured colored sand from their individual vases into one. By the time they were done, the two original vases were empty and the new one was filled with sand from each of them, symbolizing that their individual and unique grains, once existing separately, have now been joined together, in a new existence of itself. On my drive home, I thought about the two colors of sand that represent my own life. I have a bucket of gray sand, representing all the painful moments I carry with me, and a bucket of bright blue sand that represents all the wonderful things in my life. They both make me who I am today and I carry them with me everywhere I go. My bright blue sand is symbolic of the day I married my amazing wife Stacey, and the moments that I welcomed my three amazing kids into this world. The gray sand is with me as a representation of my childhood and my experience of being raised by an alcoholic father. My gray bucket was filled to the top the day I lost my daughter, Jessie, to cancer. I know firsthand that life hurts and that our painful buckets can fill fast, without notice. I know these buckets can become unbearably heavy, and can sometimes feel like they cannot be carried through one more step. But somehow we all manage to lug them around with us, one step and one day at a time. Our lives go on, and we are all tasked with living a fulfilled live, with all that has wounded us. We have to move forward! While our painful buckets remain heavy, we don’t have the option to unload them at the next street corner. Instead, we have to remember that we also have a beautiful bucket of joy that can offer us that glimpse of hope–the light that might be at the end of the tunnel. It’s filled with reminders of those cherished moments in our lives that made us smile and filled our hearts with joy. Our joyful buckets can be filled with positive experiences we encounter, but can also grow by offering a little of our bright colored sand to someone else. Who in your life could use a little of your bright colored sand? How can you make a simple deposit of joy into someone else’s bucket which will, in turn, fill yours? Take the challenge and watch both of your buckets fill! NEGU,
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