 
When my husband and I got engaged he wanted to have our wedding at his family’s barn. His great-grandfather who homesteaded on the place built the barn. It has been the family’s pride and joy.
I liked the idea of having an outdoor wedding anyway, and since “kirk†is Scottish name for “church,†the barn idea seemed like a perfect fit for us. I planned to seat our guests in front of the barn and since our church was going to be outside, I asked my carpenter brother to make a wooden cross that could hang on the barn above us. Built out of new wood, it’s yellow pine showed up starkly against the aged barn wood on our wedding day.
Once we dismantled our outdoor seating area and put the hay bales, lumber and makeshift altar away after the wedding, the cross remained. Eventually the wood faded and now the cross is camouflaged to passersby. Can you see it?
When my husband and I pull up to the barn I always look for it. Its presence gives me peace and reassurance in whatever kind of turmoil I’m experiencing, be it worry, stress, feeling overwhelmed, weary, down, or rushed. Sometimes seeing the cross that was placed on the barn on our wedding day takes me back to that early June day.
(My groom came out of the little door you see at the right at the beginning of the ceremony. My dad and I pulled up in a horse-drawn surrey)
At times it seems odd to think about how we started out our lives together at that barn with the cross hanging above us and how we have since worked in and around the barn with the cross  still on it for all these years. I consider it a form of protection some days. You know, when we experience one of those near misses from getting hurt by an upset cow or bull.
I love to tell people who are impressed by the barn when they drive by it and learn that it’s ours, to look for the cross next time. My husband and I both like to proclaim the spot as the church where we got married. Its presence has blessed our lives and the children we brought into the world for many years.
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