I knew she was nervous.  Her legs beneath her short "mother of the groom" dress were shaking even as she began singing.  She wanted to do so well.  "All of me loves all of you."  Her voice was so lovely, just right for this song.  Compassion welled within me as I thought of the emotions I had also felt as a mother at my son's wedding. Maybe a third of the way through the song she stopped.  Right in the middle of the wedding she stopped.  "Could we start this over?" she spoke back to the man who was working the background music.  She was embarrassed but firm. And so she began again and as she did her son, the groom, came over, leaving his bride, slipping his arm around her waist, holding her firmly.  She sang on now, strong and beautiful.  Realizing his bride was standing alone, Ty turned to her, held out his hand for Chloe too join them.  They stood together, the three of them, his arms around his mother and his new bride.  The song was long but I didn't want it to end.  This moment, so precious, so symbolic, so perfect in it's imperfection.  I supposed there were many wet eyes at the tender love of a son for his nervous Mom and the righteousness of that same son whose awareness of his abandoned bride brought the three of them standing as one before this captivated wedding crowd.
"It was the best part of the wedding," I told his mother later.  She smiled.
It wasn't until several months later that I heard "the rest of the story."  Sitting together at a wrestling match for our shared grandson she shared that she was singing the next day in a contest.    Reminded of the wedding incident I again expressed my love of that wedding moment.  "Well, actually, you'll have to know the rest of the story," she shared.  "That morning on the way to the wedding I was so nervous.  I don't ask God for little things.  I figure He's got enough big things to worry about.  But that day I asked God, 'Could you just put Your arm around my waist?'  I knew I needed some support.  It wasn't until I was running the next day that I realized what God had done for me. I hadn't put it together until then. God had done just that."