An Ordinary Couple

We’re both lifelong Methodists. Nancy jokes that we were Methodists in utero! One of the first things we discovered about each other was that our maternal grandmother’s families had donated the land for the Methodist churches built next door to their homes. We were both sent to our respective grandmothers’ homes during breaks and found ourselves in those churches for Sunday School, worship, and Vacation Bible School. Both grandmothers were laid to rest nearby after Services of Death and Resurrection. Each of us spoke at our grandmother’s funeral.

After the usual dating and meeting of each other’s relatives, we settled into an ordinary middle-aged life. We both had experienced the deaths of our mothers when we were young adults. We were blessed to have Nancy’s step-mother, also named Nancy, who left us phone messages from “the Queen of the step-mother mother–in laws.” She, too, was a lifelong Methodist, by now United Methodist, and was thrilled that I was a “church lady.” When she died in her nineties, she had been Nancy’s step-mother for twice as long as her mother had been her mother. She had been my mother, too, for almost 25 years.

Another blessing in our lives was our nieces and nephews. As there were no grandmothers to care for moms with newborns and their older siblings, we were usually the ones to provide that service. Now we are celebrating weddings and the arrival of great nieces and nephews!

Nancy continued teaching high school English, eventually returning to the school from which she had graduated. I continued doing church work, United Methodist and then Episcopal. We continued being United Methodist, even though we were not always welcomed as a family and had to find new congregations to take us in.

Between February 11 and March 11, 2004, Mayor Gavin Newsome offered marriage licenses to gay couples. We toyed with the idea of flying to San Francisco and getting married. Ultimately, we chose to wait. It was important to us that our legal wedding occurred in a church with family and friends.

In June of 2003, Nancy had retired after 30 years of teaching. On April 13, 2004, she was in an automobile accident that left her with many broken bones and bruises, as well as a head injury. She had been headed to Charlotte, NC, to assist her aunt who cared for her uncle at home while cousins traveled to California. When I got the call from the emergency room, I was concerned for her health. However, I was also fearful that the legal documents we had to protect us in Virginia would not be recognized there. In March of 2004, I had hand surgery and despite having confirmed with my doctor and admissions personnel at the hospital beforehand, she was not allowed to be with me even though other patients were allowed family members of their choice. In Richmond I knew I had allies to call, I wasn’t so sure about a small town in North Carolina.

There were other health scares, and by the beginning of 2005, we reconsidered legal consecrated marriage. We weren’t sure we would live long enough to see legal marriage in the USA or the UMC. Ontario, Canada had legalized civil marriage in 2003, so Nancy began exploring churches there willing to welcome us. Westminster United Church of Canada shared a building, The Cedars, with Temple Shalom. The Council of Westminster approved our request and confirmed that approval with Temple Shalom. We started working on the details of a destination wedding and found nothing but support along the way.

On July 2 we left for Waterloo with a letter of support from our pastor, as well as blessings from many in our congregation. On Sunday we worshipped with Westminster UCC congregation at The Cedars: holy space where the sun rose on the Christian altar and set on the Jewish bema. Assorted family members and friends joined us.

The next morning additional friends arrived as well as members of the congregation who wanted to show their support. Before the service began, a college friend sang Miracle of Miracles from Fiddler on the Roof with two slight variations: “God stood with Esther once again, gave her a voice and miracle of miracles: Haman’s law destroys my kin!” and “God took two teachers by the hand.” My oldest brother stood with me, while a younger brother played a piano piece he had written earlier and dedicated to our mother, The Gift of Love. The pastor offered a homily that interwove the history of the Methodist Church and the United Church of Canada. He included a prayer that we might be able to celebrate the 5th anniversary of our wedding with a reaffirmation of our vows in our own congregation. An older friend who had been my ally in decades of efforts to broaden the UMC’s understanding of what it meant to be LGBT in the UMC stood with Nancy. We smiled and giggled like school girls; the male attendants had tears running down their faces. A clergy friend from my early twenties read the letter of support from our pastor. Another clergy friend whom I met when he was a college freshman and whose wife I had known since we were teenagers offered the Benediction. We knew there were others back home and clouds of witnesses celebrating, too!

We were standing on Holy Ground! Words cannot explain the difference that service made in our lives. I was convinced that we had participated in a Sacrament, a means of grace. We could not imagine that we would love each other even more, that we would stick together no matter what because God was with us, even if the UMC was not. The experience also became an opportunity for evangelism. The waitress at our reception was the niece of the first lesbian couple married in Canada. She didn’t know it could be done in church. The Canadian lawyer we used was a gay man who though raised in the church had not been in one in years. He had no idea there were welcoming churches. My musician brother spent most of the reception talking with him about how to find a church home. When we returned home and began to share the power of our experience, I had many requests to help others find a church where they could be members of God’s family, too!

It’s about love: God’s Love and human love! We’ve just celebrated Valentine’s Day, a day named for a priest who defied the Emperor of Rome’s law to not marry soldiers. I am hopeful for a future where those who choose to officiate weddings or to be married themselves will not need to worry about anything other than “Do we have the rings in our pockets?”

C. Rives Priddy is a certified lay professional in the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. She worked in United Methodist and Episcopal churches and is about to retire from 23 years of teaching at an Episcopal Church School. Rives is grateful to have returned her church membership to Duncan Memorial UMC, the congregation that affirmed her call to ministry almost 40 years ago. A rule follower, she’s still praying, working and waiting for the rules to change!