I don’t remember saying my wedding vows. I only remember the pain of those beautiful wedding shoes.
Expensive, satin off-white peep-toe 2-inch pumps, with a heart-shaped vamp. As I stood at the altar, exchanging vows with my future husband, in that most sacred moment all I could think of was how bad my feet hurt. I shifted from one foot to the other to ease the pain. As the soloist sang “The Lord’s Prayer,” I wondered how long I could stand it. When the song was finished, the preacher pronounced us man and wife, and we marched down the aisle, out of the sanctuary toward the fellowship hall, where I kicked off those shoes and went barefoot the rest of the evening.
During my wedding the most impressive feeling I had was not love, not joy, but pain. My body was in pain from ill-fitting shoes, so my body’s impressions over-rode the emotions I would normally be feeling on my wedding day.
I knew when I bought those shoes that they didn’t fit me well, but I was caught up in the fashion of the moment, wanting to look beautiful for my wedding day, right down to my feet, even though they were hidden by my long wedding gown.
As I look back, I can see what I did wrong. Surely there were cute shoes out there that I could have worn that wouldn’t have hurt my feet. I needed to find what is right for me, not what everyone else was wearing.
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” Romans 12:2 NKJV. I am not to be fitted into the mold, but to adapt the fashions to work for me; not to squeeze my foot into an ill-fitting shoe, but to find the right size and style for me.
Now I dress my feet first, maybe not as fashionably as some, but still stylishly. I want to have my mind on God and not on how bad my feet hurt.