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Friends and family had gathered. The wedding party was standing in their respective places. Everyone was waiting on the bride to come walking down the aisle.
But standing was a difficult task for this young bride – let alone walking.
Jennifer Darmon and Mark Belawetz met at the bank counter where she worked as a teller in 2006. Noticing his frequent visits to her bank, she eventually slipped him her number and the two started dating. The attractive couple was having the time of their lives until tragedy struck in 2008.
The two Canadians decided to take a road trip to the beach with some friends, but along the way, a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction struck them head on causing the minivan they were in to flip and roll several times before coming to a rest on its side. Mark’s paramedic training kicked in and he helped everyone out…except Jenn.
Through pain and fear, she screamed she couldn’t feel her legs. Sure enough, when EMTs arrived on the scene and flew her to the hospital, she learned that the accident had paralyzed her from the waist down. She was told she’d never walk again.
With the weight of the world crashing down on her, she pondered what the rest of her life would look like. All sorts of questions swirled in her heart, but the biggest was her future with Mark. Would he want to stay in a relationship with her…now that everything had changed?
Mark answered that question in a supportive and sacrificial way. Three times per week, Mark drove Jenn all the way down into Michigan to her physical therapist in Detroit. He was there as she slowly gained confidence and strength. To add to her delight, Mark even proposed to her, asking her to spend the rest of her life with him.
But that meant taking a walk down an aisle. A very public walk down an aisle. And she hadn’t taken a single step since the accident.
In her heart, she determined she would not roll down the aisle to her fiancé in a wheelchair. No, she’d walk, even if very slowly, toward the man who’d taken such gracious care of her. Week after week and month after month of intensive training, therapy, and exercise, Jenn practiced walking, first along rails, then with a walker, then in a borrowed wedding dress, preparing for the day she’d take the most defining walk of her life.
On their wedding day, the doors in the back of the room opened, and there stood Jennifer, carefully positioned between her father and her brother. As she began to walk slowly down the 40’ long aisle to where her soon-to-be-husband stood, neither a dry eye nor an unused tissue could be found. Pastor Robert Verkoyen officiated the wedding and spoke of the “shining examples” of love and commitment the couple had been for one another.
With vows and rings exchanged, the couple was pronounced husband and wife. Mark then picked up his wife and carried her back down the aisle she’d just walked to a wedding reception…where he danced with his new bride.
This wonderful story is reminiscent of another Groom who cares tirelessly for His bride. The Bible often refers to the Church as the bride of Christ. The Lord cares for His special people, and is perfectly sacrificial on their behalf. He, like Mark, knew that expressions of love could not be limited to words only. Love requires action. So Jesus, and Mark, made the appropriate sacrifices for the ones they love.
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Topics Illustrated Include:
Accident
Care
Commitment
Husband
Love
Marriage
Sacrificial
Servanthood
Vows
Wedding
Wife
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
