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This will be another delayed post because I don’t really want Jacob or Cheryl to see it until after the girls give them the wedding gift they’ve chosen. Today Amity, Dara and I spent our last ‘free’ summer day together. I’ll be with them again on Monday, August 20, but that day will be consumed with preparations for the vacation that Steve, Joni and I will begin on the 21st. Steve and I return from vacation on September 6 and not long after that the girls will move into life with Cheryl. I relinquish my role as primary female caretaker for the girls with great joy and a tinge of sorrow. This has been a very special summer for me and I’m incredibly blessed that Jacob and the Lord trusted me enough to allow me the privilege of almost daily life with Amity and Dara.

Because this was our last day of a summer schedule together I asked the girls what they preferred to do. The options included fishing, a trip to Otter Beach, or a trip to our beautiful beaches. To my delight they chose the beach! We started our day by driving up to Lincoln City, but on the way we stopped at Alder House, the little glass-blowing studio just across from the shops near Salishan at Gleneden. Years ago Steve and I took our girls there to watch the artisans blow glass into beautiful and useful artwork. They loved watching the artists at work and so did Amity and Dara.

In the glass shop we watched the artist take a glob of clear molten glass from the 2000 degree furnace and begin to shape it to his purposes. After he worked the glass to the right place and temperature he rolled it in a coloring agent and worked it some more. Then he took another glob of molten glass and colored it another rich hue and utilizing the magic of heat and pressure caused the two pieces of glass to become one – colors still distinct and beautiful, yet blended together into one vessel. But he wasn’t done yet, he added lines of beautiful color encircling the globule of glass, heated some more and rolled until there were cosmic hues blended into the skin of the glass.

The glass was beautifully colored and shaped, but not yet utile in anyway, so he puffed into it creating a bubble of air inside the molten glass and ultimately causing that space inside to expand in such a way that the cooled vessel had internal capacity. With skillful hands he continued to work the vessel creating a flat bottom that would stand and a graceful, wide curved mouth that would accept whatever was placed inside the beautiful vase his hands shaped.  At various times in the artist’s process he rolled the hot glass in a wooden cradle that waited in water to be used to shape the vase. At other times he rolled the hot glass in his palm on a pad of water-saturated newspaper to get just the right curve that only the cup of his hand could shape. Whenever he used either of those tools, back into the furnace went the newly shaped glass so that all impurities could be burned off before he applied the next steps to beauty and utility.

As I watched this master craftsman pull a glob of molten glass from the furnace and then with tender hands and constant attention shape that glob into something beautiful I couldn’t help but think of what the Master Craftsman is doing in Jacob and Cheryl’s lives. The two shall become one. Two people pulled from the furnace of affliction, fragile and beautiful, blended together under the Master Craftsman’s hand into one beautiful and utile vessel for the Master. Two lives and two families intertwined, continuing to be perfected under the Master’s Hand. The full beauty of Jacob and Cheryl and of their combined families is yet to be seen as God continues His Master Work of refining and shaping and merging their two lives into one.

The girls picked out a beautiful cobalt blue vase with lighter colors swirled throughout that they will give Jacob and Cheryl as a wedding gift. I hope it will always be a reminder of the work of the Master Craftsman in their lives and in their marriage.  Cheryl told me today, September 18, 2012, that the girls presented them the vase. Jacob and Cheryl love the vase, this story, and the love and support the gift and story represent.

 Jacob and Cheryl were married in a private ceremony on the beach
with their children in attendance on Sunday, August 26, 2012.
“I will extol the LORD at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
My soul will boast in the LORD;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the LORD with me;
let us exalt his name together.”
Psalm 34:1-3

“But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
Genesis 2:20-24